Month: June 2022

  • Uncategorized

    How to Grow Your Online Traffic by Optimizing Your Website with SEO

    5 Secrets to Grow Your Website Traffic

    Hey, and welcome back today is part two of the secrets of optimizing your website to increase your traffic and leads. I’m so excited because today we’re going to talk about SEO basics. We’re going to talk about why the words on your website matter and even the words you can’t see those, what we call keyword phrases, and why things need to be unique and relevant. So today is going to be such a packed episode, you’re definitely gonna want to take notes, so grab a pen and paper.

    Okay, here we go. We are going to dig into the second part of the secrets of optimizing your website. And like I said, grab your pen and paper because you’re going to want to take notes. Now doing this via a podcast. With audio. Obviously, I’m not going to go as deep as I will in a video format because there’s just a lot to cover in some of you may have different website or blogging posts or platforms. I’m sure some of you are on WordPress. Some of you might be using show it with WordPress. Some of you might be on Squarespace, or let’s see where else you might have an empty shop. There’s all sorts of things you might have. I’m primarily going to focus on WordPress sites that could be WordPress with show it. And Squarespace as well, I will I will just touch on that as well. But those are sort for me kind of the core two that I want to talk about. But all of these principles all these tactics apply to any website, you know, like content management, hosting, or platform that you’re on like a WordPress, yes, it might be in a different spot, it might take you a little bit more to find it. But it is something that you can do. You can make these changes or improvements to your website to really step up how your website’s getting found in search, and eventually so that it can help the right people find you you know about and learn about your services and products. So let’s dive in. We’re going to cover four parts today,

     

    we’re basically going to be talking about setting up your website. So it’s the SEO basics. Okay, so we’re going to look at why your page title and description and your meta. It’s your Meta Title and Description why it matters, where you can find what you currently have and how to change it. Number two, we’re going to talk about your page and post URLs or names. Number three, we’re going to talk about keyword phrases over just keywords. Right, so a little bit longer, you know, multiple words together as a keyword phrase. And then we’re going to talk about things like images that sometimes get overlooked, and why each of things these things matter. The words on your site matter, but the things you can see, and you don’t see as a visitor, so it’s kind of like the guts or the roots of your entire website. And when we set these things up properly, and we understand these tactics, we can apply these same strategies over and over and over whether it’s for the site and the business we’re currently working on or if we have a future site As we roll out or future business, so that’s what’s so exciting about these principles. I was literally helping people with some of this 15 plus years ago. And yes, some of the things change, as we all know how rhythms are constantly changing. But these evergreen tactics are so similar to what they’ve been. So the great news is, is yes, algorithms change. But what you want to do to optimize your website, it’s similar. And of course, there’s improvements. And there’s new recommendations that come out regularly. But this will give you a good baseline or a good framework to start with. So let’s dive in. And I do want to mention the last episode, that we I’m sorry, the episode we the part one episode of this, if you didn’t listen to it, I really encourage you to listen to it, because I’m talking about how can we have a tech and growth mindset so that you’re ready to hear these other episodes and not feel, you know, like, I have no idea what Chris is talking about, oh, my gosh, I have so much to learn, that might be true. But it’s baby steps, you know, rolling in to talk about four high level things today. And here’s the other great news. If you join my facebook community, I will be over the next month posting videos about these different episodes. So if you’re a visual learner, which many of us are I am, then those videos if you’re, you know, in my community, and right, it’s a free community. So as you have to do is click the link at the bottom of one of these episodes in there’s a link straight to joining the community. But those videos will be invaluable, but only people that are in my community or people that are on my email list. And I’ll be sharing with them as well will get this content. So definitely jump over there, join my community. And then, like I said, I’ll be sharing videos to really dig in a little bit more for you. So let’s get started. First things first. Alright. So as I mentioned, the first thing that you can do to improve your website to get more search traffic and also get the right people that are looking for what you offer is to improve our titles and descriptions. And I’m not so much talking about the title you put on the page. Like it’s my it’s your homepage, because you’re not going to necessarily have that as a super long URL. But we’re talking more about the meta title and description. Okay, and why does this matter? Well, search engines need it to be specific, searchable, relevant and unique. Why is that? If all of your website pages had the same title and description, as far as Google was concerned, they wouldn’t know what page is relevant for matching that with the user that searching for something. So you might think, Well, why can’t my about page just say about, you know, Kristin Fitch? Well, because no one’s most people aren’t searching that they’re searching for what you do or how you can help someone. So that’s why we need to go into our platform, our content management systems, and we need to actually manually create our meta title and description or improve what’s already being added there. Okay, so what am I talking about? Well, basically, there’s two ways that you can see what Google’s part currently pulling up for you for your website, for each of your pages. And this is such a simple strategy that so many people still don’t know. So two choices here to know what your current meta title, your current title and description are, as far as search is concerned, like like Google, and Bing, and those kinds of things. All right, what you’re going to do is you’re either going to go to google.com. And in the search bar at the top, you’re going to type in site, si te colon, and then your domain name.com or.co, or whatever it might be, and then hit enter. What will come up is all of the pages that are associated or part of your website. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to print that off, print off all the pages, so whether your site’s three pages long, or 25 pages, or whatever, just print off, you know, at least the first 20 You know, those will be your core, your core pages. And when you print those off, what you’re going to do is you’re going to look for what it has as the title, that’s the thing that’s more bolded it might be in blue at the top and then below it is a little description. What I like to do is I like to take my paper and I like to write what I want, how I want to improve it, right I want to put what it should become. And as an example, if I wanted to have my homepage, talk not so much just about home for Kristin fitch.com. That’s not really going to help me get searched or get found. So I’m going to have something more like website optimization coach or SEO coach or on line growth coach, right. So in other words, I’m going to put that kind of information and then how I help people related to the area I’m working in. Okay, so that’s what we’re talking about. But just print that off. Because like I said, in the video, I’ll get deeper into this. But it’s, it’s important that you start here. Another amazing tool, if you want to have a more hands on place to work on this is called Mango tools.com/free-s, eo dash tools, forward slash, SC RP dash simulator. Now what that tool lets you do is it actually lets you put in a page, and it will pull up what the title and description are for you currently. And then you can kind of work there on that page with what you’d want to be the title and description. So that’s another way that you can find out what you currently have. Here’s the good news. Even if you’re like, oh my gosh, okay, I can get this far, I can print the page, that title description for all my pages, you’re probably thinking, I’m so overwhelmed. I have no idea where to edit this on my website. I’m gonna give you a couple examples. But once again, once you have gotten this far, there’s people that can help you, you can post a comp a question in my community, and I’m happy to try to answer based on your platform, you know where that information might be where you’re going to end it. But so here’s the deal. Once you have your page title, description, and you make sure it’s unique, it has searchable words in it that people that you’re working with are looking for, and it’s relevant to the content of that single page. Okay, then what you’re going to do is you’re going to go into where you edit your website, the back end, if you will, or the dashboard, it’s sometimes called. And if you’re in WordPress, there is a plugin, if you’re not using it, that’s great. But there’s others called Yoast SEO, in that puts on every page or post of your website, it puts an area where it’s super specific, it’s an SEO tool, and it tells you what the title is or what it’s going to pull in the description and you’re able to edit in there. And it gives you a color green, yellow or red, I think as to if you’re hitting some of the requirements, like the length of it in that sort of thing. So that’s super helpful. But on in WordPress, if you have that plug in or you can install the plugin, Yoast SEO, then on each page, in each descriptive I’m sorry, in post, you can actually edit that title and description for each page and then make that that change that save.

     

    If you are using Squarespace, they do it a little bit differently. They have it under marketing. So they’re SEO titles, right? That’s what they call them search engine optimization titles. It’s under marketing for you if you’re a Squarespace user, okay. And it would be you know, the same thing that you’d still edit it for the page that you’re trying to improve. The other great news is you don’t have to do this all at one time. Go edit your homepage, maybe go edit one of your main pages about your services. Or maybe you have a really long post about how you help people. Go edit those. And you know, as you have time to work on this, you can then check off those and then add or improve these other ones. All right. So that’s the first thing is we want to look at what our page title description is now that Google, you know, the search engines show up for us. And we want to improve those so that we’re more likely to get found in search. So that mango tools I told you about, that’s what we call a SERP simulator, and SERP is search engine results page. So in other words, how does your title and description so show up on the search engine results page? And just to make a point, Google is really the only search engine you really need to worry about, even 20 years ago, or, you know, yeah, over 20 years ago, Google was, you know, ping of the search engines. And it still is I think the share is it’s something over 60% Just for Google as far as search traffic. So that’s one that matters. If you do well on Google, you’re going to be fine and the other search engines, so don’t worry so much like well, what if what if it shows something different in one of the other search engines like DuckDuckGo or Bing? Don’t worry so much about that. Okay, number two. So number one is, what is your current title and description for each of your web pages? When you go to google.com and search, then you want to improve that title and description so that you’ll rank better in your in the search. Number two is what do you currently have for your page in posts as the URL the name right so if i Like done a webpage on your website, what shows up in that, that URL bar at the top? All right. And what you don’t want is you don’t want to say something like article 25, or like the date in the month without a specific name right of the page. You also don’t want it to be short, in a lot of cases, especially if it’s a article or a blog post. You don’t want something like website tips, and only have fat, if it’s something more specific. So an example would be as you want it to be multiple words, with the underscores in between the words, because for search that matters, it needs to be able to read it as specific words. So an example would be how to optimize your website for SEO. Right? So that would let the search engines find my page. And as long as I have content on that page that’s relevant. And it ranks well, meaning that it has enough content that it that Google decides my page should show up in a higher search than maybe someone else’s page that maybe doesn’t have a lot of information. So there’s multiple prompts here. But what matters is your posts right to your articles or blog, blog posts need to have really specific and a little bit longer URL, so that Google is going to give you credit for having that name, and that it’s searchable, you know, so what you wouldn’t want is blog post 2020, SEO all together, that’s not really going to benefit you. And so if you make these changes, then that will help you also get found in search. And I would also point out, the more content you have on the page, right with information that’s relevant, though, to that title. And to that search, what someone might be searching is obviously going to benefit you. So you can’t just have a page title. And then you have no content or very little content, it’s you’re still not going to rank for that.

     

    We’re going to talk about this another day in another series. But everyone should have at some point, several long format blog posts or articles on whatever your core business focuses are, that we call these. Well, it’s long form content, but we also call them pillar posts, P I ll a our pillar posts, because this is something where let’s say you were doing a guide, let’s say I was doing a guide on optimizing your website for SEO. There’s so many people that have done articles on that. They’re really long, right? And so, and there’s ranges, I’ll talk about this later. But it’s something like between 20 504,000 words, right is an example of a pillar post. So they’re not short blog posts are long, they have a lot of information for people. And they’re formatted very specifically to try to really boost Google recommending that page to people if it’s matching what they’re searching for. That’s not something you have to do today. I’m honestly, just as I’m rebranding, I still have those on my list to do in July. So I haven’t even done mine yet. For this current my Kristin fitch.com site. So once again, that’s not something you have to do now, but I did want you to be aware of it, because those are the other sorts of things that will help you rank. Okay. So number one is, you need to know what your meta title and description is. And then we want to improve those number two so far was, what is your page and post URLs or names? Do they have underscores or dashes so that the specific words can be searched? And did they have enough relevant words so that Google’s gonna give you more credit for that, that post or that page? Number three, keyword phrases over keywords? Okay. Words matter? Well, here’s the thing, if we just put in what we think, but it’s not what people are searching for, then we’re never going to increase in our ranking. And then we’re not going to ever get more traffic. And so for instance, let’s say you have a, let’s say you do cooking recipes. And let’s say that you have a recipe that’s seafood gumbo. Well, that’s great, but there’s, I’m sure there’s many many, many, many people that have a seafood gumbo recipe. So that’s great. You can definitely have that. But if you can get it a little bit longer, you know a couple more words that are part of yours. Then when someone searches maybe it’s a spicy seafood gumbo recipe, maybe it’s Louisiana seafood, spicy seafood recipe or something. But then you’re gonna get more targeted traffic and you’re not trying to compete with the people that are ranking for the most popular word. Another example might be if you put in what’s a example here, maybe you put in you know, maybe you’re an author and you put in a different a certain type of genre of books. Well, there There’s 1000s, and or maybe millions of people in that genre most likely. So it’s just it’s not specific enough. So a keyword phrase just means it’s multiple words that are a little longer. Or sometimes we say like a longtail. Instead of just like baby clothes, right? That’s super broad and big. And it’s unlikely unless you’re a big content website that you’re going to rank for that, at least on the first few pages, at least. Alright, so keyword phrases, there’s lots of ways you can do keyword research to see what should you be, what words or keyword phrases should you be using, you know, on your page and in your content, you can either go to In Search Google Keyword Planner, and then within their advertising suite, they have an area where you can put in keyword ideas, and then it will pull up for you different suggested ideas, and then how much search traffic it’s getting. That’s one way and it’s free. It’s really not the end all be all. Google also has a Search Console. And then they have a Google Trends where you can look up what’s trending as far as popularity and traffic as well. There are others with their paid sites you can do I think, like a free trial, but then it’s it’s you pay for it. One is a href keywords explorer. It’s an amazing tool. And but I think it might be like $100 a month. So some of these tools seem pricey, but they’re very powerful. And so once you’re getting serious about trying to grow your traffic, it’s something you could consider, but it has so many amazing tools on this a href keywords Explorer. And I will link to these when I do my post on this. But once again, there’s lots of ways to find out what words are, you know people are searching for. In other words, you don’t want a keyword that no one’s practically searching for. Okay. But you also don’t want to be

     

    just that basic keyword where everybody it’s too vague. So you’re never going to show up. That’s why that keyword phrase is somewhere that you want to shoot for, you want to shoot for that. Okay. All right. So number four is, and it’s often overlooked. You need to care how your images are tagged and how your images are if they’re going to show up in Google. So here’s what’s happened to a lot of people. They never change their image name. And it might be like image, oh, oh, six, two, dot jpg. And then they don’t do anything when they upload the image to their website to help that image get found in Google search, or Google images. So the first thing is I like to rename my image name so that it’s specific to the photo, right? It’s related to what my page and what my photo is about. And then you can, you should put in a little description in your alternate or alt text. So when you upload your photo, there should be a little area that shows like caption or alt text, you can fill those in. Because remember, Google, even though now with AI, they can sort of categorize images, for the most part in search, it’s still through those words, words that are associated with your images that are going to help you get found in the Google image search. So why wouldn’t you do this? It’s something that once you start doing it, it’s no big thing. But for so that’s one thing is moving forward, you can do this. But then you can also go back through your website, just page by page, unless you have 1000s of photos, this shouldn’t really take long to go into edit your photo and then make those changes. If nothing else, they’ll definitely put in your alt text, even if you don’t change your image name. And like a city can also add a caption, if it fits your website, some websites, it looks good and other websites, it just makes it messes it up aesthetically. So you can decide that based on where the image is that. Okay, so the highlight here with all of this is your website will rank higher, you’ll get more traffic over time. If your words if you every place that you can put in relevant words you do. But two things I want to note, one, I’m not talking about keyword stuffing. So meaning you don’t want a page that just has tons and tons and tons of keywords but no actual usable content, no, you know, guide or useful tips for somebody, you want it to be a page that somebody would come to and they don’t just leave or bounce that they would actually get value in using, okay, that’s the key is create content or information about what you do that will be relevant to the person searching. Otherwise, they’re just going to leave your site and it doesn’t matter if you’ve got more traffic they’re going to they’re not going to be a match for who you’re looking to work with. The second thing is, as I mentioned, you need to just everything needs to be unique and searchable, relevant and specific to that page or to that image. That way Google can match the searcher know the person looking for something with the best possible pages, all right, that’s what matters. So let’s review. One, you want to know what your search engine page title description shows up as now. And then over time you want to improve that to, you want to make sure that how your page and post URLs are showing up? Do they have a separation between the words and doesn’t have enough words? So Google knows what your page is about? Number three is, are you using keyword phrases over too big of keywords that you’re just never going to place for? Unless you’re spending a lot of money? Or you’re a huge, huge content site that’s been around forever? And then are you going actively looking for what keywords you should be using? And then also asking your audience? What are they searching? What are they doing, you know, and ask them for specific feedback. And then number four is images. Don’t forget about images and video on the way that we tag things the way that we talk about them right in their title, their alternate text that matters, and it’s super important. One last tip, I’ll tell you, it, this is going to be covered in a future series,

     

    I’m sorry, a future episode of this series. But when we also post content to YouTube, you know, or other places like that. And we make sure to use the tags, we give it a good title and description. And then you know, we get with Kingo back to our website, we get tons of kudos, we get tons of, you know, credit, if you will, from Google, when we’re linked back from these bigger places. And so that’s another way to drive traffic, and then Pinterest as well, which we’re going to talk about both YouTube and Pinterest in the future and a future episode. But that is huge. And it’s amazing. But you will get traffic from Pinterest, especially if you put pins there that makes sense. And they go back to your website to a specific piece of content. And it’s it’s kind of evergreen. So once you create it and you pin it on occasion, people keep finding it because Pinterest is a visual search engine, if you will write for ideas and inspiration. So that’s it. That’s everything for today. And I would just tell you, I know it’s a lot of information we covered today. But really, let’s just think with it, think about this as getting your feet wet, start getting introduced to that. If you can write a word, a sentence, you can make all these changes, or you can get someone to help you with these changes. But if you don’t know about these things, then you don’t even know to ask for the help that you would need to make these improvements. Like I said, remember, this is kind of like, much like a tree, your the things I just talked to you about. It’s like your routes, right? If most of this is behind the scenes, things that you might not see, if you just look at someone’s website, you know, from a visual perspective. But these are the things that will matter so that Google and the other search engines can match you up better with users you’re trying to or visitors you’re trying to find. And I just hope that you will embrace the fact that this is new information and learning that’s growth, right? We are talking about techy things and I know that can be a little bit daunting, it can be overwhelming for a lot of people. Just remember I’m here for you, I want to support and encourage you as you grow your business in a simple way. It’s simple, because as you learn these skills, you can keep reapplying them, you can keep using them, you know, unlike social where everything’s always changing your your website, your email, you know, the things that we’re gonna talk about building a community, those are things that you’re you are in control of. And if you learn them, even if you then hire it out, you’ll understand what’s behind these concepts and these strategies. So I’m so excited for you. I can’t wait to see the growth that’s about to happen for you in the coming months. And I do want to share a little excerpt from you from the book chasing vines by Beth Moore because as I thought about the website and the roots of this, this core stuff i i thought of her book and I wanted to share just a little bit of that book with you. Okay, so in her book, she talks about a plant expert, if you will, and I thought this was really interesting. So here’s what she says. British author Jamie Goode has an insatiable passion for the fruit of the vine. He holds a PhD in Plant Biology, bringing expertise alongside his years of experience to the banqueting table. Best of all, he writes about grapes with a sense of familiarity. Like he knows them personally. And here’s what is said they’re making the vines struggle generally, generally result in better quality grapes. It’s a bit like people play someone in a near perfect environment, giving them every comfort and all they could ever want to satisfy their physical needs, and it could have rather disastrous consequences for the personality and physique. If you take a great fine and make it make its physical work quirements for water nutrients easily accessible, then somewhat counter intuitively, you will give you poor grapes. And she says, Good goes on to say that good soil gives a great final choice. And given the choice, it will opt for the easy way instead of going to the trouble of bearing fruit. Oh my gosh, that’s so good. But basically she’s saying, give the grapevine a favorable environment and it will choose to take the vegetative route. That is it will put its energies into making leaves and shoots. Effectively, it is saying, this is a fine spot, I’m going to make myself a home here. It won’t be too bothered about making grapes, but make things difficult for the vine by restricting water supply, making nutrients scarce, pruning it hard and crowding it with close neighbors, and it will take the hump, it will sense that this is not the ideal place to be a great fine. Instead of devoting itself to growing big and sprawling, it will focus its effort on reproducing itself sexually, which provide means making grapes. But I think that that’s so good. And she says In other words, as long as a great plant is feeling comfortable and unchallenged, she will leave lethally leaf, she will award leaves, leaves and leaves upon leaves to her sweet natured host,

     

    she will bear reasonably leaves in her happy hearts content. Eventually, she’ll become so thick with leaves that the hungry passerby will observe there’s an area cluster to eat. So I think that’s much like, you know, maybe your work ahead on optimizing your website on getting more traffic on growing are leads through your website and through growing a community. No one said there isn’t going to be growing pains, or that it’s going to be super easy for you to work through these steps and maybe to get frustrated a little bit. But I promise if you put in the work. And I’m going to hold your hand along the way, if you put in the work though, these results are going to pay off the website, I started with my mom that I co founded in 2008 ZigBee zoom.com. I haven’t been regularly working in that business for some time. Although I do plan on getting back two more hours on that. We still Yes, the traffic has gone down a lot because we aren’t adding more content. And we’re not really spending time there. So compared to what it was, it’s much lower, but we still get, you know, a tons of traffic and even just from Pinterest on old pins. So there’s no new content, we’re just other people are repeating our content mostly think we get 30,000 referrals from Pinterest on average a month. But that’s work we did years ago and it’s still showing up. It’s still working. So I promise learning these tactics, learning these strategies and then applying them and as you get better tweaking and improving these things. It will bear fruit for you and your business, I promise and also being part of a vibrant, encouraging community of people that are there to help you grow and learn and be lifted up. So I hope you’ll join us on our Facebook group.

     

     

  • Uncategorized

    How to Build an Authentic & Engaged Community

    5 Tips to Grow a Thriving Group

    Today we’re going to talk about building community. We’re going to talk about things I’ve learned over the years as I build communities around me both in person and online. We’re also going to talk about a couple of the highlights or takeaways from the book, find your people by Jenny Allen.

    And the reason I wanted to talk about this today is, I think it’s so important to encourage you to build your community to build the people around you. And I want to share some ideas for how you can do that in a really authentic way in a way that brings value to the people in your groups. And that lets you really build those connections and even you know, friendships and superfan level of interest that people have in the community you’re building that people want to be part of it.

    So definitely tune in today and take some notes if that helps you. But I can’t wait to hear about the community you’re building and how it’s going for you so far too beautiful friend.

     

    . For some of us, we probably have already started building communities. But these will be good reminders for you if you already have a community, or maybe a couple of new tidbits or tips. And for those of you that haven’t started building a community yet or not really, these will be some great ideas for you to get going. The thing I want to mention, though, is don’t worry so much about the number of people in your community. I recently just started a new Facebook group and I have other groups for other things that you know, have 60 people or 1000s of people in it. This group I just started has 15 in it, because I’ve just launched it, you know, in the last, I don’t know, really the last two weeks. And haven’t you know, I’m growing. It’s really because I didn’t have the bandwidth yet to pour into the group. So I’m starting to move more people in there. I’m starting to promote it more. So that will grow. But I just remind you, it’s more about the engagement, that connection that is about having a huge number of people. We have other platforms for that. Okay. All right. So the other thing I want to tell you is one of my favorite things to talk about is community, and relationships and just, you know, serving people being of service to the people around us. And so I think this conversation will really, I hope fill you up, I hope it’ll feed your soul in a way that remind you how important our relationships are and how important it is that we pour into. Hey, and before we jump into today’s conversation to talk about community building, I did want to let you know, I am starting a contest that if you post a review for the podcast on Apple podcasts, if you don’t use Apple, then just post to one of the other platforms, screenshot it, join the Facebook community and share it in your community tag at Kristin Fitch and put a hashtag podcast contest. And I will be picking several winners in July, that they can either pick a business coaching session with me or a website audit and leads roadmap and coaching session with me. So it’s a super amazing giveaway that so many people love because it’s just one on one with me on a zoom call to dig into either all of your online things, or we can talk about community building or we can talk about some other challenge that you need to work through. So I’m so excited about it. The link to my Facebook community is at the bottom of every episode. And like I said, you just need to do a review. And if you’re not sure how to do that, join my community and tag me and I will tell you how I have a video step by step. So I hope you enter into that contest because I can’t wait to work with a couple of you in July for that giveaway. The people

     

    Alright, so building a community or a village or our tribe, like I said is so important. because we all need support, you know, in our lives, or we, you know, in our faith lives, in our personal lives in our business lives. And yes, a lot of those times those things can overlap those areas. But it’s just so important one, it’s because humans are made for connection, right, you really can’t thrive without it. For instance, one study, when they’ve looked at people that live the longest, of course, eating well, and you know, exercising, that kind of thing is super important. But even more important than that, they found that people with deep, meaningful relationships, so people that are social, right, that had at least a couple of close family or friends that they connected with, that was one of the key indicators of people that often lived the longest, assuming that their health was, you know, decent. So I just think that’s amazing. And it lets us remember how important connection is how important community is, how important learning from and growing from other people is, and how important, you know, being able to know we have other people that see us other people that are there for us and other people that are supporting us. And, you know, lifting us up when we need to be lifted up. All right, so let’s dive in. The first thing is, as I just mentioned, community is all about connection. All right, so I’m going to share some tips with you today, that I hope will help you really build authentic communities that really align with your, you know, the work you’re doing in the world. And that will align with the people that you draw in and bring bring forth. But before I do that, though, I just wanted to encourage you, if you still haven’t found your tribe, or your village, you still haven’t started a community, or maybe you haven’t found communities that you want to be a part of that are giving you what you need. Just keep trying ask other people that you respect, or you’ve been, you know, connected with online, where do they hang out, you know, online, and in person conferences, all the things. I’ve been some amazing in person conferences, there’s ones that I haven’t been to, but I would love to get to at some point. I have local communities I’m in and I have online communities, I’m in both small groups, you know, just a couple people where I connect with regularly and then other larger groups. So it’s really important. So I just wanna remind you don’t feel discouraged, if you that this is a harder thing for you. Because we all go through different seasons. And some of us are better at reaching out or finding paths to these communities than others. So don’t get discouraged. You know, reach out, ask me, I’m happy to share lots of places that I’ve been, or communities that I’ve joined or tried, you know, that sort of thing. So and I’m sure other people in the art community that’s on Facebook currently, would also love to share with their thoughts with you. All right, so we’re going to talk about five buckets, five areas to build a thriving community. So here are the buckets, we’re going to talk about what you should do in your, your group, your community, if you will. So I think it’s, you know, you want to have some level of education, you know, educating are a learning component.

     

    Number two is opportunities to connect. Three is things that inspire right the community, inspire each other, lift them up, for give people an opportunity to promote, support, and celebrate or cheer each other on. And then five, you have to be willing to be shown being authentic, vulnerable and honest, we need to show up in these communities where we’re speaking where we’re at, and not the perception we want to have, right, so important. So let’s dive into these. The first thing is, do you have an element of education or learning or teaching in your community. So this could be videos, this could be lives, this could be bringing guests in, you know, it could even be you know, PDF handout, it doesn’t matter so much the type of education or learning you’re doing is that you offer it so that people are super clear when they join this community, what they’re going to get from it. And today, I’m more talking about a, you know, communities that might be free, but but most of these things pretty much go in a paid community as well. And I would just share with you, I think both are great. And I think there’s a time and a place for both types of communities. Let’s see, I’m in communities that are you know, free groups, and I’m in plenty of other communities that are paid, you know, memberships or commute learning communities, or masterminds I’ve done so I think both are of such good value. And so there’s nothing wrong with it being free or paid as long as it’s super clear what you’ll get get from the community. Okay, so education, are you providing regular content in some form so that could be video can be audio, it could be handouts, it could be lives, but are you regularly per writing things that educate, teach, or are learning opportunities for people hands on, it could be a workshop, it can be, you know, bringing on some of your community members and doing a audit with them, you know, or just a conversation, you know, a q&a, anything like that. So that’s the first thing, do you have an education or learning element in your community? And do you do it consistently, because one of the things you have to do is show up consistently, whether you’re running a podcast, or you’re an author, whether you run a community or membership site, you have to be consistent, and you have to tell people what to expect when to post regularly and keep reminding them of the schedule, you know, what should they expect, each week, each month, each quarter or each day. All right, next is connection. People want to be in your group, because they feel like they belong in everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere, you know, so if you’re a super creative, you know, cool cast, creative soul, a faithful soul, you know, whatever your thing is, make sure that’s tied into your community, that it’s super clear who your communities for, and then you’re gonna get a better group of people that connect right at a deeper level, because they have some similarities. So connection, you have to one, reach out to those types of people, and you have to have content that they would be interested in, but don’t even nella. In other words, make connections with people that have something in common, right, there has to be a commonality. And doesn’t mean everything has to be in common, but something but don’t even know don’t be for everyone. Because I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, you’ll be for no one at that point. You need to be a unique community in some way, right? Your personality, what kind of content you’re teaching, the kind of things you do the fun, the interesting. So you know, just make your connection based on those interests, you have those unique things, those unique elements, and people will be drawn to it, I promise. Okay, next is do you have an element of, you know, aspect of your community, where you and how you can inspire people, this can be through, you know, coming on and doing positive messages or sharing quotes or scripture or stories. It could be interviews with people in your community, you know, that are inspiring and uplifting. Maybe it’s their journey story, or their success story or overcoming obstacles story, you know, but it’s story, it’s words that inspire us, it’s stories that inspire us. But that is actually how humans learn. And how we recall things, how we connect to things is three story more than facts. So every time we connect on the level of story and connect on the level of life, we’re going to build that deeper community. All right. Next is, do you have a chance

     

    or an opportunity for people to regularly celebrate their wins, to share their wins to celebrate each other, to support each other and, and their business ventures, and to promote themselves or to you for you to promote them? Now, groups are very different. In some groups, I’m in even some paid groups, they have a separate topic, area or category that’s for CO labs, like club collaborations, or, like if you, if you’re looking for podcast, guests, you can post there, you know, for that information, or you can share maybe some workshop you have coming up. I mean, other groups that don’t allow promotion are that sort of thing. But I think you just need to set it clearly in the roles. But I think on occasion, you should have allow people in that certain post or in a certain category, you know, like a folder or something, to share that stuff. Because at the end of the day, if it’s all about the community organizer, and their promotional stuff, it can get old, you know, we all want to think that we don’t only belong, but that we have an opportunity to connect with other people about what we do specifically. So make sure you have that element. Because you get people more engaged when, you know, I can share, Hey, I just had this great podcast episode come out that I think you might really like if you’re doing X, and someone else might be like, Oh my God, that’s so cool. This is what has happened to me, right? Or they might say, Wow, I did something similar. Maybe we decided to collaborate on something. So I think that’s super important. Have the space or an opportunity for them to share, you know, in a deeper way that’s connected to what their purpose their work in this world is. And then number five, you have to be willing to be authentic, to be vulnerable and honest, be sincere, and then you have to show up to be of service. What can you do go above and beyond especially when you’re building that community and when you have the bandwidth? How can you help people ask them what else do you need? Hey, what would Do you like to hear more about? What would you like me to go live on? What are you struggling with? ask people questions and keep asking questions. And then, you know, respond with more content have more value in those areas, and go above and beyond especially at the beginning, do you have the ability, the space, when your group small, to respond to people’s comments to tag people and ask a specific question to email them directly. All right. And if you do, if your group still small enough, you can do that, that’s amazing. You can also get, you know, other admins to help you. Or, as you get too big, you can then have just like maybe like a once a week post, or something like that, so that you could respond or someone could just to one post a week, and you’re not having to jump on all different kinds of posts or threads. The other thing is, is getting no you have to get to know your people. So find out more about them Don’t just post stuff, and then you really don’t ever get to know like, what do they do? What’s, what books do they love? You know, what are they into? Because the more we know that, the more we’re going to connect with them, and that they’re really going to connect with us. And that space is going to become just, you know, magic, if you will. And I wanted to share with you an excerpt from the book that I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast called Find Your people by Jenny Allen. And I thought it was just so poignant for today. Let’s see. She says she starts out says CS Lewis said, friendship must be about something even if it were only an enthusiasm for Domino’s or white mice. Those who have nothing consumer nothing. Those who are going nowhere can have no fellow travelers. Whether your attend school or manager home or manager company, work was meant to bring fulfillment and promote thriving for those we love and know. But we complain about our God given jobs, and we gossip about the God given people we’ve been given to do the work that work beside worse, work has been redefined as a hollow pursuit of money rather than a pursuit of human thriving. This is so not the point. My favorite podcast Pastor Tim Keller said it this way. Work is the rearranging.

     

    Sorry, work is rearranging the raw material of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish. This pattern is found in all kinds of work. Farming takes the physical materials soil and feed and produces food. Music takes the physics of sound and rearranges it into something beautiful and thrilling that brings meaning to life. When we take fabric and make a piece of clothing, when we push a broom and clean up a room, when we use technology to harness the forces of electricity, when we take an unformed naive human mind and teach to the subject, when we teach a couple how to resolve relational disputes. When we take simple materials and turn them into a poignant work of art, we are continuing God’s work of forming, filling in subduing whenever we bring order out of chaos, whenever we draw out creative potential. Whenever we elaborate and unfold creation beyond where it was, we found it. We are following God’s pattern of creative cultural development. And she says, so we start with a mission to bring thriving. And then we look for collab collaborators to build with it is the greatest and messiest fun. Maybe your days are filled with toddlers and college classes, or PTA, tasklist. Fine. But what if those places become mission fields and the people in your places became teammates? Don’t you want to be part of something exciting and meaningful? Are you sick of living in your bubble of self fulfillment and meeting your own small needs? What if you got to wake up every day with an assignment and a team of people by your side? You can? This one truly is as simple as a change of perspective. Oh, my Gosh, seriously, how good is that, especially in relation to building community in relation to showing up and collaborating with people? And yes, in relation to seeing that the work we do no matter what it is, is so important. It’s because it’s always been about people. It’s always been about connection, and about fellowship, and about seeing other people and being of service, no matter what our job is. And I love this quote by Seth Godin that reminds me of actually that you know what I shared with you from the book. He says, art is too important a term to be used just for painters and sculptors and playwrights and actors, and architects of a certain type. No, I think we need to broaden it to to graphic designers and salespeople and bosses, to lay preachers and gifted politicians, and occasionally to the guy who sweeps the floor. Art is a human act, something that’s done with the right sort of intention. Art is when we do work that matters in a creative way in a way that touches them and changes them for the better. Oh my gosh, what if we remember these two examples as we built communities? What if we remember these two examples as we stepped into the world to do our work, whether it’s for ourselves, and we feel like the work is super meaningful, or whether we are working at a fast food job, or a preschool or, or we are raising up our children, whatever we’re doing, we have impact in other people’s lives. And we have an opportunity to educate and connect, inspire and to support and celebrate those people. So let’s all show up and do a little more than that. And I promise we will be building thriving, beautiful communities together.

  • Uncategorized

    7 Keys to Having a Tech & Growth Mindset -Online Tech Doesn’t Have to be Hard

    The other thing I want to tell you is starting today for the next six weeks, I am going to do a six part series on optimizing your website. We’re gonna do a tactical and strategic episode each week on how you really get your website optimized for SEO to really grow organic search without a lot of effort. These are evergreen tactics you can use from now until you know the end of this business like forever. And then we’re also going to talk about how do you really step up your website to be your most important business tool to beautiful friend.

    So today before we can dig into five of the six part series that are really specific on tips and tactics you can take to optimize your website, we have to talk about the first of the six part series, which is having a growth in tech mindset, ah, this is so important. I talk to people weekly, who say things like, Oh, I’m so bad at Tech. I don’t understand tech, this is so hard for me, I get frustrated, I get stuck. I so get it. But it’s something that the world does. It goes round with tech, especially online tools, online processes, websites, all the things. And so what I want to do is help you shift that mindset so that you’re ready to really take on these next other five parts that we’re going to get into in the next six weeks. And I think this is really that cornerstone this is if you can make this shift, I promise the things I teach you, you can figure out. And the great news is, as I go through this series, I’m going to provide a simple cheat sheet of what to do. And of course, I offer also, you know, coaching in this area, and I’m going to be releasing a course later in July, that literally holds people’s hands to help them with all of this. But you can definitely do all of this on your own as well. It really just depends on if you’re someone that this makes a lot of sense to you. Or if you’re somebody that really needs to dig in deeper with very specific steps, and you need someone to hold you accountable. Alright, so let’s jump right into our growth and tech mindset. All right, here we go. Here we go. We’re going to dig into seven different things that I think will help shift your perspective when we think about tech and how we approach tech and how we feel about all things, online tools, online processes, website, social, all that good stuff. Okay, the first is, I want you to know you are capable.

     

    Did you hear that you are capable even of tech things. Okay? No one’s asking you to become a developer or a web designer. We at EY should say I just want you to know that you are able to learn the steps you need to learn to build and grow your business online. And you don’t have to be an expert in there’s always information or people that can help you. You just got to get clear on what it is you really need right now to move forward or to get your business going. So as I said number one is you are capable. Stop telling yourself negative self talk like Oh, I’m so bad at Tech. I don’t understand. In that, you don’t have to understand everything, you only have to understand the parts you need to operate your business. And what I will tell you is, less is more. Let me say that again, less is more recently, I had to have some of my websites, I basically had to have been cleaned the I had some malware that had shown up and I had to try to remove it myself. But mount malware is really tricky in the sense that it’s kind of hidden in little nooks and crannies. It’s kind of like if your kid got lice, it’s not easy to get rid of at least not right away. Well, malware when to get in your site, it’s like an infestation. And the reason I’m bringing this up is I needed to use an expert, I needed to pay somebody. And because I had multiple, multiple websites that cost me $500, which, if you think about it is actually a steal of a deal, because my sights got cleaned. It was a direct one on one, you know, professional that helped me it wasn’t through some big company. But the reason I’m bringing this up is he makes text simple. In other words, he doesn’t even have an online form or way that you pay online, when you first reach out to him via his website. You can email him, but then you he calls you, he calls you on the phone. Yep. So if someone that is a master at you know, basically making your site free and clear of malware or malicious software, he calls you on the phone. Okay, so once again, tech doesn’t have to be hard, you’re capable, in less is more. So he literally then emails back after he cleans the website with exactly what he did it. It’s like a text, you know, text, email, what he did, what he fixed what he found, and then recommendations for you moving forward. Now I’m somebody that was able to maintain my site’s myself, you know, update the theme, the plugins, the version of the content management system. But if someone can’t do that, obviously, then he might have recommended a company you could use to do that. But this example illustrates to you less really is more, you don’t have to do stuff the same way everyone else is, if you only need a link, or you don’t even need a link on your website for people to pay you, you can just email them a link to your pay pal. Guess what that’s perfectly okay, until you get to such a point where you’re so big or making so much money that you can have someone help you with that. So first of all, you are capable of getting done, what has to get done in order for your business to operate online. In Less is more, don’t try to do at all, we only need to do the minimum the things that will actually impact our business operating. Alright, number two is and I just mentioned this one, but tech doesn’t have to be hard. Truly, we think it’s hard because there’s always new things. There’s always new tools. There’s always new processes, there’s new social media, there’s new algorithms. But guess what, I’ve said this probably for 20 years, you don’t have to be everywhere, and you don’t have to master everything. You just pick the one place maybe the two places that match best for what kind of content you have, and who your customer is, and that you have time or bandwidth for and be there. For instance. Of course in the past, because I’ve worked in this industry for a very long time. I’ve been on pretty much most social media platforms like I’ve at least been on them even if I don’t continue to do them. Years and years ago, I was on Twitter. I didn’t like Twitter, it was not this is before Twitter even had photos and videos, it was when it was just 140 characters. I hated it. I loved being on Pinterest. And then when Instagram came on, I loved Instagram because to me it’s visual and I’m I’m drawn to that. The beauty I’m drawn to the images. But my point is, you don’t have to be all the places and so tech doesn’t have to be hard, because you don’t have to do all of it. Actually, I would challenge anyone to say if you actually would just specialize in one or two things you’re going to have such a bigger impact and more momentum in those places. Instead of trying to do be everywhere and try to master all the you know different little tweaks that you have to do for the different platforms, getting frustrated and wanting to pull your hair out and actually not getting real impact. For instance, let’s go back let’s go out of the tech world for a minute and talk about a company that’s mastered this Chick fil A regardless of how you feel about them. I love Chick fil A I love their food. But they years and years ago they didn’t have the budgets to be on TV and radio billboards newspaper they didn’t have a budgets to be everywhere and actually make a big impact. So years ago, they decided we’re going to literally buy the heck out of billboards, like you would drive down the street, you know, at least in a lot of areas I’ve been in, you would see Chick fil A plastered on the billboards, they knew they could, basically, you know, they had enough of a budget marketing budget to buy out billboards, but they didn’t have a marketing budget, that would have a big impact on TV. And when they happen on TV, it’s for something very specific, like they were, they were a football suit a bowl sponsor, so it was very specific, okay, it’s the same with you, you don’t have to be able to places, tech doesn’t have to be hard, because I’m only asking you only master or learn how to do a little bit of it, the ones that fit best for you, who your person is, and what kind of content you provide. And I’m happy to talk about this in further episodes, because it’s really important. Number three,

     

    just like I said, you don’t have to do at all, you can pause or put aside the things that aren’t urgent, or aren’t needed right now for you to figure out. Okay, so what I like to do is I tell people, do a brain dump, or make a list of all the things you think you have to do related to your online business, to tech things to tools, to, you know, things, I think you need all the bells and whistles, write them all down. It can be everything from like, I need to update my website, I need to get an online payment program, I need to understand how to do Instagram reels, whatever it is you think you need to do or figure out write it all down, put it on one side of your paper, draw a line. And the other side, what truly is the most important one or two things you actually, if you actually did now could impact your business or making income. If it’s not broken, if it’s not something that’s urgent, or you can’t do it a simpler way, then it can probably stay paused or be put aside for now. And if we capture the list, it won’t be stuck spinning around in our head, trying to figure out which of these things do I work on, and oh my gosh. So pause it and put it aside. But you’ll still have a captured list. So you can always reference back to it. Okay. The next is start building or finding your tech Dream Team. And this does not have to be people that are you don’t have to have necessarily like a web developer or a software developer. But start finding either freelancers, or people that create templates for you know, understand how to Canva or maybe they know how to do you know, Squarespace or whatever it might be, start finding those people ask other people or groups or in for recommendations. And as you find someone good, you know, have that person, you know, available and work with them, you know, on a project basis or on a one time you know, gig and maybe you need help with a certain thing. But have those you know, start building that team of people that can help you with your tech needs as they come up. Once again, this doesn’t mean most of us don’t need a full time person in these areas. unless we’ve really grown our business to scale, you know, much bigger in the millions. And even then sometimes people don’t have full time people, they just use freelancers or contractors. But start building those people up, start asking people, even before you need some of those things, start thinking about them, you know, and if you find someone’s good at one thing, like maybe with your design, find out what else they do well, they could help you with down the road or who else they recommend. Alright, so once again, you’re you’re capable, and tech doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to do all the things and you don’t have to be in all the places and you need to start building out a team of kick butt tech people and when I say Tech, I mean just savvy people, right? So to be online marketing, it can be people that are really good at automations processes, or they can be really good at code or design. But just start making a list of people that are just amazing at what they do. It could be copywriters, it could be email marketers. Just I like to have a spreadsheet or it might be in like my I use monday.com for capturing a lot of those things in doing automations keep it there but just have it somewhere where you start collecting this person is amazing for this thing and then how do you reach them? Number five, I love this one. So I don’t know if you know her but Ali Worthington is a Christian, inspirational writer and speaker. She’s also a coach and has all sorts of other things she’s doing. But she has the saying and she says with God and Google we can do anything. And many, many years ago she had yeah thinks she has four sons. Four or five, she has several sons. And she, her kids were young and her husband lost his job. And at the time she was staying at home. And she knew his prospects were not looking good. This was many years ago now. Anyways, she started Googling, like, well, could I make money doing X, you know, and she started searching things. In through using Google and prayer and guidance from God, she literally started building a business. And fast forward many, many years. She’s run conferences and wrote several books, has accessed successful speaking career membership programs, so many things. Oh, podcasts, she has it all. So I love that thing. But it’s true. With God and Google, we can do anything. And what what is she getting out here? One, you know, where is our North Star? What’s our compass, you know, in for many of us, and many of my listeners,

     

    it’s God, like, are we being guided towards the work we’re doing? are we stepping into our calling that he’s called us into. But then even if we are and there’s things we don’t understand, which is going to happen, we’re all going to be pushed out of our comfort zone to learn new things. And I might challenge you to say, I wouldn’t want to live in a way where I wasn’t learning new things, whether that’s in my personal life, my business, doing new things like hay gardening, or I mean, I’ve garden for, maybe it’s canning something new or learning something that I like to learn new things. And I hope you do, because that’s also part of that growth mindset. We always want to be the student, we always want to be the learner. But her point is Google, we can literally search anything at our fingertips, and we can get an online tutorial, we can get a someone that specializes in that we can, you know, read the step by step directions on a website. So we really can find out anything if we’re willing to put in the time, do the research, and then sit down, get comfy and get moving. And if we don’t want to spend the time because you know we’re in it’s a barrier to entry. That’s when we hire professionals, a freelancer or a coach or a stress strategist, something. But I love that. So just remember, with God and Google, you can do anything. And I think that’s so important to remember. It’s basically everything’s at our fingertips, whether that’s, you know, guidance from prayer and scripture, or whether it’s searching Google for how to do something. Number six, we need to automate our businesses. And no, you don’t need to automate everything all at once. That’s overwhelming. Of course, it is. Often, we only need to automate something when it becomes too much to handle the one z two z’s, right. So in other words, if you’re getting a lot of email submissions, or you’re getting, let’s say you have a podcast or something like that, and you have guests, you’re getting a lot of guest submissions. And it’s disorganized. In your email, you can’t keep track of something, that’s a good time to automate that your form goes into, you know, a spreadsheet type program in order to track it, you know, so for instance, in the program, I use Monday, but there’s lots there’s asana and you know, many other ones, the form is filled out, it goes into my, you know, my podcast, guest tracker. And then from there, I get an automated message saying that someone submitted it, or I can just check it every you know, every couple days, I can set it up either way. So that’s a sort of thing. I’m talking about, automate, when it’s necessary to either keep you organized, or when it’s getting too cumbersome, that it’s not working for you. Now, some people love automation. They love process automation. And so they might set it up at the beginning. But if that’s hard for you just do it when it’s needed. Okay. Number seven is simplify. Yes, we need to simplify what we’re doing in our business. And we need to stop feeling all the overwhelm. For us hearing everybody talking about all the tech, the tech tools, the social media platforms, all the changes, because we don’t need it all. As I mentioned it, you know, with less is more or pausing and putting it aside, simplify, truly What’s your top goal, you know, this week or goal or to this, this month, this quarter? Which things are really going to move your business, you know, which ones are your income generating,

     

    you know, activities. And so, let’s look at those. And once again, if you can not do the tech thing right now, if you can not set up the tool, or it’s one that makes a lot of sense to you. Use that. Don’t use a tool because someone else recommends it. If it’s hard for you and it’s confusing. Don’t use it, ask for more recommend patients. For instance, when I start using a new online tool, because I need a new feature, or I am looking for something, I don’t just pick the first one I’ve heard about, I will review it, I will look at their feature list pricing, pros cons. I will then though go and look at the competitors in that space, similar products. So I might look at two to four, I might even look at five. If I see two or three that I really like, I will spend the time to set up a really quick already called it you know, a test a test account or do a couple day little demo, you know, when they let you set up like a demo or trial, I will do it. And I’m not saying you have to do that, right. I like this kind of work it for me it comes easy. I’m really quick to decide what the features are. And if it makes sense. But I can tell you, I’ve reviewed so many tools over the last 20 years I’ve looked at so many different programs. I’ve years ago, you know, my company built kids in word game apps for iPhone, and we’ve done all different things. So I’ve been in, you know, I’ve been looking at websites or building my own companies, websites, I mean, with with a group for, you know, off and on for 20 years. So this comes easy to me now. So ask people like me, which ones do we recommend? Why? What would I like about it? Because I’m still just like you probably looking for two tools that are intuitive. They’re easy to use without me having to jump through hoops or look, watch 10 tutorials for the basic setup. Sometimes we’re all going to have to watch a tutorial to learn something super specific we want to know. But often I’m looking for tools that from day one, the first 10 minutes I’m using it, I can figure it out at least some parts of it. And I’m sure that’s what you want to. So keep it simple. Only use the tools or setups that you need. Even with your website, you don’t have to start with all the bells and whistles or in all the things and actually you can start your business without a website. Although I would recommend you quickly get it up. For those of us with websites. Yes, you want the core pages to look good. You want it to look professional, you want people to be able to reach out to you to know what to do, which we’ll dig into all this later on other episodes. But you always can build upon what you start, right. And so even when I launched my podcast, and now I’ve rebranded it and launched it, I keep iterating, right. I keep tweaking, I keep changing. But when I first launched my website, I didn’t have a lot of time, that was last year. And it was a different podcast a different focus at the time as I kept niching down to what I’m doing now, which was what I was doing, actually 15 years ago. But my point is, keep it simple. Keep a list and then you can always come back and do it and get recommendations from from other people. And check out like a demo or their walkthrough. It’s hard for you and it doesn’t make sense, there might be another tool that’s easier. So don’t just go with the default or the one that everybody tells you, it might not be a fit for you. Right, we all see things differently. Some of us are more visual, some of us are more, you no need to read things or some need to see like videos of things. So once again, keep it simple. And there’s always more than one solution. Or as basic as say like more than one way to skin a cat which sounds kind of terrible, but I think you get the point. So that’s it for today. But let me go through the seven things again, it’s you are capable, you are capable of all the tech stuff as you need it doesn’t have to be hard is number two. Number three, pause or put aside the things that aren’t urgent for you to do right now.

     

    For start building your tech Dream Team Five with God and Google we can do anything as Ali Worthington says, Six automate in your business when you need more organization or it’s getting beyond your capability to keep up with seven. Keep it simple, right and actually, that’s where the idea of kiss like even websites like wiziwig, which meant What You See Is What You Get tools like the website builder tools, it used to be like a kiss it keep it simple, stupid it like in other words, it was big, easy for anyone to understand. Okay, so keep your business. Keep your tools, your processes in what you’re working on right now simple. You can always add more, you can always improve. You can always get help on a certain thing. But let’s focus on the here and now and what you actually need. When we’re talking about tech, our website, our email lists all of it start slow start simple. You can always manually add an email if you’re only You know, collecting one or two or a couple a day or a week. As that gets bigger, you know, and you have more momentum, then you’re going to need a system or a process. But start out easy start with what works for you. And you can grasp okay. And I just want to leave you with one last thing. I’m going to share an excerpt from Mary Moran’s his book, slow growth equals strong roots, she has a prayer near the end of the book, I’m just going to share a portion of it. It’s called slow growth prayer, because I think so many of us, especially those of us that are feeling on Cape the incapable of doing the tech of, you know, being capable of so many things that were pushed to learn in our business might be feeling, she says, There’s nothing left for us in our before. Only striving and spinning and achieving. We’re not going back. As we stand before you at last exhausted from all this running from our own stories. We hand it all over to you, God, every good gift turned around and given right back to you. The use of my gifts in service to others for the rest of my life, for your ultimate glory. That’s it. I have my mission. Now, I know my assignment, there are no more tightropes for me to walk, no more mass performances, no more splitting, the differences of being tethered to you and tethered to life lived only for myself, I’m calling God. Finally I can see all the places where the light gets in. And in this moment, I decide this is a story I’ll tell you, you know, and basically she’s talking about, you know, where she’s been our life, the businesses she’s created in the past, she has written other, you know, at least one other book I know of, and just trying to always, you know, be more to always perform to always be a perfectionist. And during a slow season, when she finally kind of came to this realization and acceptance that she didn’t have to try, right that we already all are everything that you know, we’re meant to be. And so her books about finding grace and freedom and purpose and an overachieving world, it’s actually a lovely book. And I highly recommend it. But I thought that’s so true for today. If we can just show up and share our story, show our you know, abilities, help others and service and just keep you know, asking for that direction from God. All the other things will work out who should help us the tech? Which things do we really need to work that feel most aligned with our business, with our customers, and with the life we’re trying to build? So just stay steady? Slow down a little bit. And don’t worry so much about the tech and all the little details? Because they will get worked out for you, I promise. And there’s always someone to help you totally. And so many of us are here, ready to answer your question. And if you need more help, there’s plenty of mentors and strategists to help you in a more in depth way. Coming up next week, we will jump into part two of the six part series. And we’re going to dig into how do you set up your website for you know, SEO basics and your meta and your images and your titles to really supercharge your website to get it ready. You know, it’s kind of like if you were redoing your lawn, it’s like we’re going to get the roots ready, we’re

     

    going to get the soil conditioned. And then we’re going to kind of, you know, graded out that is what we’re going to dig into next week. It’s like, what are the roots, we need to fix those and a lot of it has to do with the words we use how where we put them how we put them. And these are steps that you can use. From now on in any website you have for your businesses, which is amazing, literally the principles I’m going to teach you each week. There’s so evergreen, that all of these things I was teaching businesses 15 plus years ago, I used in my own business, a family fun website called ziggity zoom, to build our audience over time cumulatively to over 10 million users. And to over 40,000 page, I’m sorry, 40 million page views. And it was all organic tactics that we did ourselves on our own. And while most of our sites aren’t going to be a content site, so we’re not expecting those kind of numbers, you will see growth by the tips I’m going to tell you and all of these are things you can apply yourself where you can get someone to help you if it’s not something you’re comfortable with. But next week is going to be the roots. How do we get the roots of your website the you know, the framework set up properly. And then over time as you add new pages or more content, you’ll keep applying these same things. Okay. So the amazing thing is, and yes, do certain things change where these things get tweaked because of algorithms or changes to different sites, of course, but the the framework, the core guts of all this is the same, you know, so yeah, I’ll update this right each time A year or two years with some of the new info. But overall, it’s still very similar to even 15 years ago, which is amazing to me because most things change so much, especially online. But in this case, so many things are actually the same. So until next time, I can’t wait to see you have a beautiful weekend. 

  • Uncategorized

    6 Ways to Find Your Passion & Enthusiasm in Your Business After Burn Out

    On today’s episode I talk about why you might be walking through a season of burn out, frustration, lack of clarity or frustration in your business. I share 6 reasons why this might be happening in your current season and what you can do about it to feel excited, passionate and focused in your business again.

     

    On today’s episode, we are going to talk about why you might feel burnt out. What do you do about it to step back into your passion and your purpose, we’re going to talk about why you need to really own your gifts and your expertise so that you can find that passion and purpose in your business. And I want to start by just sharing a quote by Bob Gough with you from his book undistracted. He says, if you hear a voice over your shoulder, talking about your biggest failure, and it isn’t calling you, beloved, it isn’t Jesus talking. That is so good. So we’re going to talk about that today. We’re going to jump all in. And I’m hope that this episode will leave you feeling fulfilled, and renewed and just inspire you to make some small shifts in your day that I think will make a big impact in how you approach your business.

    Today’s episode, we’re going to talk about why we might feel burned out why we might not be feeling passionate and enthusiastic about our businesses. I don’t know if this is the place you’ve been maybe you’ve walked through the season, maybe you’re currently walking through the season, season, overwhelm a season of not feeling clear on your business, maybe a season of feeling like you’re spinning your wheels, and you’re not getting the results you want. Well, I can tell you a friend, I’ve been there. Actually, I’ve been walking through the season for the last couple of months. It’s just been a hard time, there’s been things going on with my young adult or college aged kids and high school kids. My dad has injured himself twice, you know fractured pelvises and things like that. There’s just so much going on in the world, I’m building up this new business that I’ve started, I’ve pivoted my business, and I’m rebranding the website and how I work with people. So it’s been a lot. And there’s been certain weeks in days, where I feel like I’m trying to force myself to work more. And yet my results literally become, you know, almost like I got nothing done that day. And so I’ve really had to take a pause and think about what’s really going on here. What is God trying to tell me? In what do I need to do different so that I can continue through this season, be productive, be restful, and also feel like I am continuing in on my purpose without exhausting myself? So we’re going to talk about six ways, in areas that you may not realize are things you need to be acknowledging, and then maybe how you need to do something different. So here we go. The first is, are maybe you aren’t focusing on your top three big business goals? In other words, are you stuck in the weeds? Are you getting so busy in the daily to do that you really can’t see the trees right in the forest, you just see all of it instead of kind of where you’re going beyond that forest. And I have been, you know, here too, I have days or weeks where I do I get I get busy on the to do list instead of thinking strategically or at a higher level and say, which of these things are the most important to get me to my goal for the week, the month, the quarter? And so sometimes I get stuck in the busy and instead of saying, is this the most important work I can do right now? Can I have someone to help me with it? What would happen if I didn’t do some of these things on my to do list? Okay, so that’s the first thing I want you to consider. Are you focused more on your to do list on all the little things instead of constantly looking at? What are your top three goals? And what activities are you doing? What business activities are you doing that are helping you reach those goals sooner? So that’s the first area where I think we can feel burnt out, because

     

    we’re doing a lot of work, and we’re not seeing the impact of the results we should be. And that’s huge. When you feel like you’re working all the time, or at least the hours you have to work. And you don’t see the impact or the financial increase that you’d like to see, if it makes us feel like what are we doing? Is it worth it? Is this actually going to grow into a more substantial business. And so you know, if this is a hard area for you, one I like to do a daily, it’s like a priority sheet of what I’m supposed to be working on. And then what my goals are, overall, it has lots of other things on it, and I have that on my website. The other thing is, is if you’re not working with either a coach to help you with these, you know, to build your business sooner, or you’re not in a group, it can be a paid mastermind, it could be just have a group of several of you that are kind of building something that you you check in regularly, it could be weekly, it could be bi weekly, and you kind of keep each other accountable for what you’re working on. And if you’re actually hitting your goals. The next thing is why we can feel burned out or not feel as passionate about our business as enthusiastic is, we are working too much, we’re working too hard. Once again, maybe we’re not getting the results we want, maybe we aren’t getting the results we want. But we’re we’re burning the you know, the wick or the candle at both ends. And then we wonder why we don’t have the mental bandwidth to do more or to even feel like we’re pumped up about our business. It’s because we’re working too much, instead of working smarter, and doing those strategic things. Alright, the next thing is, sometimes we’re in a season where we need to rest more whether it’s because we physically have gone through something, you know, with our bodies, or we’ve been sick, it could be that we mentally emotionally, are worn out because of the season we’re in, but either ourselves or the people around us the people we care for and the people we love. So maybe we’re pushing too hard, or pushing our bodies or minds too hard in a season where we need to fit in more rest during the day. And maybe during that week or month. I’ve had this happen. There were weeks, in the last two or three months where I sat at my desk, and I was I was determined, you know, to get certain work done. And then I would notice three hours passed. And I didn’t have much to show for it, you know, and I thought what is going on here, I just didn’t have the bandwidth and have the mental space or energy to do that much work. And so what I had to do is I had to kind of give myself that grace, to say, You know what, it’s okay. It’s okay that some days, I’m not going to get done what I want. And instead I need to go out back, maybe work in the garden, take a walk, do something to let my mind in my mental space kind of clear. Let my body relax or rest. So that when I do show back up and do the work, and feel like I’m able to, I’m ready. Now some days, that can be that it’s you know, you show up the next day, and maybe you’re still not ready. You know, if you work for yourself, and even if you don’t, there’s seasons that all of us have gotten lots done and their seasons are days where maybe we don’t. And I’m certainly not saying you won’t get anything done. I’m just saying it may be that you get a good two hours of work done and that the other hours, you really can’t do some of that work.

     

    But we need to listen to our bodies, when we need to rest. Okay, that physical and that mental wall, if you will, those are indicators for us to listen to our bodies. And if we don’t do it, we really can end up you know, more unwell, you know, either we start feeling sick, or maybe then it goes on longer because we don’t address it, you know, we’re not caring for ourselves properly. Okay, number four is we aren’t spending time in prayer. We’re not getting quiet enough. We’re not making time to hear God. And of course, you may not be somebody that aligns in your faith where I do but of course for me, this is so important for you. It might be meditation, it might be something else. But for me, it’s I need to spend time in prayer. I need to read scripture, I need to have quiet time. And I’m need to make time to try to hear God not just to pray to Him. When I do this, my day is better. My business efforts are better. They’re more aligned with how I believe God wants me to show up in the world and in my business. But sometimes we get busy and for some of us this can get put to the side, or we can notice that we’re not doing it as often as we were. I am going through a time Right now were tired in the morning. So I’m getting woken up early by the dog and other things, that usually isn’t the case, my husband gets up earlier than me. So then I’m falling back asleep. And I’m, I’m realizing when I get up, I’m tired. And so my schedule is a little less set right now in the mornings. In other words, I’m getting up at a little bit different times right now in the morning, still feeling tired, not super pumped, right when I get up, and I’m not fitting in that morning time that I usually did at the same time before I would usually do it first thing. But I know there’s an impact on me when I don’t do this. And so for me, it has to be getting back to that being a priority and getting on my calendar. Even if I don’t get up the exact same time every day it needs to be if it’s for me, it’s like the first thing or within the first 30 minutes of getting up. So are you finding time for prayer? Are you finding time to get quiet, to get outside to really take in, you know, big nature and just the the beauty of everywhere and to hear God? I think it’s just so important, you know, in our in our lives, you know, in our relationships, but also in our businesses. Next is we don’t have community around us, that can help support us, they can help guide us give us their advice on how we’re stepping into our business, how we’re growing our business, and maybe where we’re stuck. And I’ve had this happen before I’ve been, I have lots of friends, lots of different groups I’m in. But when it comes to growing my business, locally, I don’t have a lot of friends are doing the same exact thing I’m doing, especially that I’ve worked in online for so long. But I do now have friends in the online space, that I’m part of different groups. I’ve made friendships through people I’ve interviewed and through different programs or masterminds I’ve been in. So over the last, especially two years, I’ve really started to grow and surround myself with more female entrepreneurs, more faith led entrepreneurs, who I have regular, you know, calls and conversations with that we’re lifting each other up. We’re praying for each other, we are helping each other and sharing advice, getting feedback from each other. And you know, talking through those hard seasons are those decisions of those pivots. And I can tell you, it makes all the difference if you don’t have that, keep seeking it, ask other people where have you found that reach out to me, I’m happy to share with you places that I’ve found some of those women and I have also a group of women that I work with, and you know, in that way as well.

     

    It’s made all the difference though, for me as I’m growing this new business. And then number six is sometimes we aren’t showing showing up fully ourselves. We don’t see how our gifts and our ability or our experience can bless and help others in our businesses and in our communities. And I’ve been here I’ve worked in the online marketing space for a very long time. I’ve worked with different companies. I’ve, you know, had my own company. And I do again, of course. But I noticed a couple years ago, I was trying to fit in more than I was just fully being myself all the time. I mean, on my hand moving kind of, you know, open mouth laughing, you know kind of person, I can be loud sometimes. But I can be quiet too. I love Christmas inspiration. But I found that I was trying to fit my business in years ago. This is the family fun business. I started with my mom, and 2008. And when I’ve been in tech, I tried to fit in with the people around me more than trying to stand out as who God made me to be in my unique and special way. So now of course I’m helping people and I am trying to show up with the things the experience I’ve had that other people don’t know, help them in that way in their business. I’m trying to make sure I incorporate my quirkiness and my gifts and my ability in my business in my program. You know what, when I show up coaching and in doing consulting with people, but when we’re not showing up fully ourselves, it doesn’t feel authentic. And it’s harder because we’re trying to fit a mold when we’ve been made unique, right? We don’t fit a mold that matches anyone else. Just like our fingerprint is unique to only us. And I heard also recently our heartbeats are a unique signature. I had no idea I don’t even to me, that is a miracle, right? How did God make each one of us not only to have a unique fingerprint, but a unique heartbeat. They literally said you can identify someone by their heartbeat, which to me is wow. I mean how amazing but so when you find that you’re not fully showing up yourself. What you can do is Try to realize like, where is it that you sound? Maybe more formal than you would usually talk? And where can you make those tweaks on your website or on your podcast or in your emails to people? So, look at that, you know, are you? Are you speaking how you want to the people around you? Are you using the language? Are you giving yourself credit for the many years of experience and what you’ve figured out what you’ve learned that other people want to learn from you, this does not have to be in a formal job, you could be a stay at home mom, and you have mastered scheduling your family, you’ve mastered budgeting, it can be that you worked in marketing for 20 years. And now you’ve learned how to take that information and help people in your niche. There’s so many things we don’t give ourselves credit for. And I would say to you that it’s when we show up and realize our gifts, when we show up and realize that the experience that we have, and how these things come together, right? It’s an intersection, our gifts and our ability, our experience and our personalities. When that comes together, it’s truly we basically become a magnet to other people. But we have to acknowledge all those things and how they come together. And I am going to do a future episode on that, you know, how do we get clear on these different things? And how do we bring them together, so that it’s literally like a magnet out to the people that we can help. And so that’s the sixth thing. So like I said, I think sometimes we don’t feel passionate, we don’t feel enthusiasm in our business, because these different things are going on. And we’re not acknowledging that this is what’s happening, you know that we’re working to mold pushing too hard. We’re not really giving ourselves credit, we’re not owning our gifts, we’re not owning our expertise that unique from other people’s. And so let me just go back through the six things for you. So that you can, you know, note these first is, it could be that you’re not focusing on your top business goals. And instead you’re focused on all the little tiny to dues, or you’re spinning your wheels on something that maybe you need to farm out, because it’s taking you way too long to work on it. And it’s it’s sucking all your mental energy to put towards this thing, instead of working on the big goals. Next is you’re working too much without having the results or the impact that you think you should. And so it makes you feel burned out.

     

    Three, you’re pushing too hard, and you’re ignoring your body’s need to rest. So what I would say is you need to check in with yourself each day and then assess that with your deadlines with your goals. Where can you take a break when it’s needed? And then when can you plan ahead? To actually rest before you feel that that worn out feeling? For we aren’t spending time in prayer, we’re not getting quiet enough. You know? And so it’s how can you make this more of a priority? How can you find time for prayer for scripture or for meditation? Five, do you have people around you, that are helping you through your your business decisions through your life, you know what’s going on in your life? Do you have people around you that are supporting you in what you’re doing, that also can get what you’re saying, because they’re going through similar steps in their own business and where they’re at. Number six is you’re not giving yourself credit, for your experience and for your gifts. So you’re not truly acknowledging or, you know, really embracing all those things that you’ve been given in order to step in the world and serve, but also to, you know, make a living, if that’s what you’re called to do, to, you know, both support your family or help support your family. And then also, you know, it will also further the kingdom, if you will, because you will be able to impact it with your income, you know, and however you feel that you’ve been called to do that. So those are the six ways we can feel burnout, it’s why we might feel like we’re lacking some passion, or some focus or some enthusiasm. And I would just say to you, if you can work on these six things, and for some of you, it might be one, for some of you, it might be two things for others of us, we might need to work on all these things at different times. So, you know, on my daily schedule are priorities. I have different blocks, like what are you thankful for today? You know, have I done healthy things you and I go on a walk?

     

    Did I connect, you know, in a relationship, you know, did I reach out to somebody to tell them I appreciate them. So besides my business goals and priority, there’s areas to make sure holistically I’m approaching my day so that I will I will feel you know, grateful and I will get healthy things In, you know, mentally and physically, it has a space for scripture or a quote. So that helps me stay grounded in my day in sort of focusing around everything, not just those goals. But the goals helped me stay on track in my business. And there’s days where I don’t feel that out. And I can promise you, on some of those days, I realized that I get stuck in the weeds. And I don’t get those big. I don’t move the poll towards those big bigger goals for the week, the month in the quarter. So I’d love to hear from you. What are you doing that’s helping you step out of maybe a season of feeling frustrated or burnt out or unmotivated, so that you can feel passionate and enthusiastic again, I would love to hear from you. So DM me on Instagram, you can leave me a audio message on my website. It’s on the side of the website. It’s just like a little bar that says message me. I would love to hear from you. So check that out. And until next time, I hope you have a wonderful and beautiful week.

     

  • Uncategorized

    3 Website Tools & Features You Need to Engage Your Audience

    Add Your Heading Text Here

    If you have your website up and running but are looking to engage with your audience here are three features and tools you should add to your website to increase your engagement with your audience.

    1). Add Audio Memos

    2).

    3).

     

    Add Audio Messages or Memos Feature to Your Website

    There are many different audio message apps you can add to your website but here are several to consider.  First is Speakpipe – you can add a button to the side of your website or add a button onto a specific content page of your website.  Where ever you add it make sure you let your audience know about it regularly. This is the current app I am using on my website so folks can send me an audio message and I will post thee question on my podcast and answer when it fits the show.

    Next up is Telbee.

    And Vocaroo

    And Soundbite

     

  • Blogging

    How to Improve Your SEO to Grow Organic Traffic to Your Website Guide

    In this 3 Part Series you will learn how to optimize your website to Grow Your Organic Traffic using evergreen SEO tactics on your website.

    I will cover:

    How to Use Page Names/Page URLs to Increase Organic Traffic

    Why You Need to Use and Edit Your Meta Titlee and Description to Improve Search Ranking Results

    How to Use Images and Alt Tags to Increase Organic Traffic

     

  • Podcast Episodes

    When is it Time to Hire Help or Outsource

    What Questions to Ask before Hiring Help or Working with a Virtual Assistant (VA)

    On today’s episode we’re going to talk about when is the right time to hire help, whether that’s a VA, or hiring someone like an SEO coach, or someone to help you with ads, whatever the thing is, we’re going to talk about when you should and when you shouldn’t hire someone to help you, too beautiful friend,

    Okay, let’s dive right in. In Why am I talking about today? Why is it so important? Well, I’ll tell you a couple of reasons. First of all, I do have people ask me things like when should I hire a VA or I’m thinking about hiring help. And that’s the first reason I want to talk about this today. 

    But the second is even way back when I was helping people with their online presence, you know, over 15 years ago, the people I was working with would be approached all the time by either an SEO company or an advertising company, or some other company trying to sell them something. And of course, the it would sound great, like, hey, we can help you get more leads, we can help you, you know, get traffic or whatever they were offering. 

    The issue was in my clients just you know, didn’t really think about this is why would you hire someone to help you if you don’t know what your baseline is, if you don’t know what your baseline is, how do you know if the money you’re putting forth, or the person helping you is actually helping you achieve your goal, right, or your business measurements, you know, improving that. That is why this is so important. And that’s why we’re going to talk about when you should and when you shouldn’t hire professional help, to specialize to help you grow or to help take on some of your workload. So here we go.

     

    Okay, first, let’s talk about when you shouldn’t hire help, at least not long term help. The first is if you have a problem with your business, then you need to understand what the problem is, and how it can be fixed. Now, obviously, if you can’t fix it on your own, I’m not saying gets don’t get someone to help you. But you’ve got to understand where you have an issue. And then you have to understand truly how it gets fixed. Even if you don’t actually do the work yourself. That’s the first thing. The next is you can’t outsource something or handed off if you don’t know how to do it yourself. Or you don’t know how to do it yourself. 

    And it’s not so clear that you can very specifically articulate what it is you want from the person. Because if we can’t, step by step, explain to them our expectations of what they need to do. It’s not going to work out and we’re going to be frustrated. And so as the person we’re trying to work with, because we have failed to super clearly in really simple terms, give them examples of what we want, how we want it when we want it and make sure that that aligns with how they can help us. That’s the second thing. The next is to how many people try to get help before they actually know their numbers before they know their measurements. 

    And this is just a slippery slope. Because how do you know how much they helped you if you don’t even know your your numbers. And so today for this example, about the numbers I’ll explain regarding your website. And so here’s often what happens. Someone has a website. 

    Obviously, most people if your site’s been around for a little bit, and there’s some content, you’re getting traffic, right? Someone is finding your site or you’re telling people about it, or it’s in your emails for people are clicking on your website. Well, that is obviously a metric that you’d want to know how many people are coming to your website, from where and then how many people are signing up for something that you offer, right. So this can be an email lead. This could be they’re calling you on the phone, but they’re signing up for a program where maybe a free group or community you have but we have to track those numbers. Because if you ever want to grow that and you’re at that point where you actually want to spend money growing it not just doing it gimmick, you know, tactics or strategies to help you. 

    You want to know what your baseline is? And then where are you trying to get in? Does it make sense for the money that someone’s you know, what program? Or what service they’re offering you? Does that make sense to have it aligned with what you want and where you’re at in your business? So it’s so important that you understand that.

     The next is, are you consistently having that extra work? Or that it’s an area that you just can’t fit in doing? But it’s integral to your business? Meaning, are you consistently not able to do the work or you’re just, you’ve grown enough, and you have consistent growth, where it makes sense financially, but also from a workload perspective, to have someone help you? So that’s the other thing that people need to look at it. Sometimes we don’t, we just feel busy. We feel like we’re overwhelmed. But often, that is a different struggle or challenge that we have to work through. Because if it’s not really about growth, right, like maybe our revenues aren’t where we want them to be yet. We’re thinking of hiring someone, and I’ve been there, just, you know, truth bomb 100%. I’ve been there. I’ve had those times where I feel overwhelmed. 

    And I think, is it because I need help as I get a little bit bigger. But sometimes it’s because I wasn’t super clear on my priorities in what work had to get done. What was mission critical? And what work could be put on the backburner that wasn’t really mission critical to what I was trying to accomplish at that time. So often, it’s because in our minds, we think, oh, gosh, wouldn’t it be so nice if I had help? But before we get help, we just need to reflect and decide, are we? Are we overwhelmed and too busy? Because we’re not prioritizing, and we’re not doing the most important work in instead? Are we doing busy work? 

    So important to make that differentiation? And sometimes you might need someone else to help you look at that, you know, look at your schedule for the week, what are you working on? What are your goals, or if you don’t have goals, yet are not real clear goals, maybe you need help with getting those kind of nailed down, you know, maybe you need to work with someone, you know, a consultant or a coach or, you know, some sort of expert in that area, you know, whatever your area is. So it’s just super important, though, that we really look at each of these things before we jump into working with a virtual assistant, or hiring a specialist to help us with something, whether it’s to grow our, you know, our audience, or whether it’s to grow maybe an Instagram following. Maybe it’s to get a

     

    publicist, or somebody to help us with PR. Once again, before we do that, what are our goals? And what are we already hitting now? Or are we going from never submitting, you know, like pitches to media or podcasts, but then we’re going to hire somebody to do PR for us. But we have no baseline like we’ve never tried it ourselves. We just think, Gosh, I need help here. There’s two challenges there. The first is, it’s expensive to work with a PR person. So if you don’t have a budget for that right now, then it’s costly. And so the question is, could you do it on your own? Do you have two hours a week or a couple hours a week, or even a handful of hours a month? To work on? You know, putting your stuff out there to people? Or who else could you use, that’s maybe not a full publicity firm, a PR firm. And so there’s always good alternatives to write, there’s this, there’s been around for many, many years now. Right? A freelance market. And so you can go on places like Fiverr, or Upwork, and lots of other ones, and find somebody to help you with on a project basis. Right. 

    And so that’s always a great thing to to try is don’t commit to some long term, you know, three months, six months, 12 month program, until you’re sure that’s really what you want to do. typed it out, maybe with somebody that will just work on a project with you. The next thing is, that’s what I always say is do a test with somebody, you know, before you commit two months in lots of money to work with somebody, do a test, you know, and obviously, like a paid test, like, just say, like, Hey, can I just have you work on this one thing for me, and like, let’s just see how it goes, you know, if this is a fit. The next thing is, until you’re sure that the the thing you’re going to do is what you want to do. Don’t sign that long term agreement initially. 

    Make sure there’s a fit. So whether that’s doing phone calls or doing that test, or making sure what is the cause? Can you get out of it if you’re unhappy with the quality of the work or the profit or timeliness of it? But you need to be really careful that you understand what are the terms to which you’re signing. So if you’re signing a six month you know deal with somebody, either a VA or like I said, a PR person or anyone what you know? And when what case can you cancel it is it a cancelled anytime as long as you give 15 days notice or 30 days notice. It’s so important though. And so I don’t think you should just jump in to working with a professional working with someone to help you until you really understand these things. Let’s review. If you have a problem, you need to learn how to fix it first. And you need to know how to deal with that thing before you hire somebody at least long term. If you’re going to outsource or hire company to help you in a specialized way, you need to learn how to do the thing yourself before you hand it off. Because if you want them to do a great job, you need to be clear on what it is you want them to do for you. You have to know next is you have to know your numbers. What are your metrics are your measurements, which What’s your baseline? 

    You have to know that because you don’t want to start some giving someone money and think, Oh, they’re doing a great job, but you really had no idea how it was going on your own if you weren’t measuring metrics or numbers or indicators. The next is do you really need help? Do you need, you know help let’s on a monthly or weekly basis? Or do you feel overwhelmed because you haven’t set clear, reasonable priorities? Next is are you experiencing consistent growth? Where you know, it makes sense to spend that money on another person to help you? And then can you do a test? Or if you can’t do a test, can you shine sign a shorter duration agreement or ensure that you can get out of the agreement? If it’s not going well for you if you’re not satisfied with the work or the results you’re getting? And what sort of timeframe does that look like? And so

     

    I think this is so important, because like I said before I’ve been here, there have been times where I thought, oh my gosh, I’m so busy, I could really hire somebody to help me with this. But often it’s because I was spending too much time on things that didn’t matter. They weren’t mission critical. And when I eliminated some of those other things, if you will busy work or work that was distracting me from my primary, you know, top three goals, I had more time. And surely that doesn’t mean that you don’t get to a stage where you do hire people to help you whether they’re contractors or whether they’re freelancers or whether you have employees. But we need to make sure we’re at that point before we get that help. So reach out I’d love to hear if you’ve if you already work with people that help you and if you do it what point did you hire those people? If you’re not quite there, but you’ve been wondering about this? What other questions do you have? And how else can I help you answer this question about when do you get help? Until next time, I hope you have a great week. 

  • Podcast Episodes

    4 Ways to Get More Leads Using Your Website

    Use Your Website to Get More Leads to Grow Your Online Business

     Today we’re going to talk about four ways you can get more leads from your website. This is such an important topic and so many of us don’t like talking about these things. We think they feel a little salesy or in people’s faces, but the honest truth is, is if you don’t tell people what you have to offer them, they’re not going to know we have to make it easy. So let’s jump right in to beautiful friend. 

    Okay, here we go. We’re going to talk about four ways to get more leads from your website, we’re going to talk about why pop ups are important. How you use freebies and lead magnets, how you do exclusive content or behind the scenes content, and then inline forms to unlock content. But let’s start off with something that I hear often from people, which is I hate popups. I hate when someone’s website has that obnoxious little box. But why do you think you go to so many websites with pop ups, there’s a reason it’s because in so many cases, they convert really well. Because if you can match what your visitor wants, and the type of content that you can offer them, you are going to increase the number of people that sign up for your email list or that actually go for your offer.

    So the first thing you need to do to get more leads from your website is you need to have a popup on your website. And I would even say an alert box, an alert box is the bar that goes at the top or bottom of your website. Or sometimes it moves moves with some of the content of your website. If you already have a pop up box, there are still things you can do to improve it. The first is a lot of people think they have a pop up, you know, little freebie or promotion on their homepage, and they think that’s enough. But traffic to your website is not like it’s your going through the front door of a store, people can come in through any page of your website, they can even find you through an image, which means they could really show up anywhere. So you really need a pop up throughout your website. But here’s the good news, you don’t want to spam them with pop ups. So there are things that you can do to set up the pop up so that it only shows up at a certain frequency. And only so often, right, so you set these parameters up. So there’s someone seen it in the last day or week or month or six months, whatever it is you want to set up, they won’t keep seeing that message. So it really shouldn’t be irritating and getting your visitors to leave because you’re only showing them that information that one time or you know, not as frequently as every time they go on every page of your website. So the reason they’re so important is if you can match your pop up content, either a freebie or some exclusive thing they’re going to get or it’s a time sensitive offer, with what they’re already asking for you to provide them, you know the type of content that you’re sharing with them, you’re gonna get people to sign up for it. If you’re if you have a pop up now and you’re not getting leads, or it’s almost none. First we need to look at, are you getting traffic to your website? For today’s episode, let’s just assume you’re getting some traffic there. And you don’t need huge numbers to make all this work. You just need to have a consistent number of people that are your possible, you know, prospects or possible clients to come to your website. So the first thing you need to do is, if it’s not effective for you, you need to consider what is it you’re offering and if people aren’t biting, let’s find out. Let’s pull your people let’s get feedback on what they really want from you. And let’s offer that. Okay, how do you set up a pop up if you don’t have one? Or how do you change the pop up and make it better? So some of your websites, the content management systems in that things like WordPress or Wix, Shopify, show it all of these types of things, though Do your content management systems, in other words, that that’s what runs your website, the back end where you’re editing content, some of them have a feature or a plugin that you set up to, you know, put the pop up on your site or an alert box. Now, some sites, it’s not, you don’t have full customization for those things. So a lot of people move on to use a third party application or web offering that offers pop ups. So you just basically put a little piece of a snippet of code on your website. And you can get someone to help you with this, that lets you then have super customized pop ups for what you’re trying to do. The examples of that is pop up domination is one company that does them lead pages, and there’s so many more, and I’ve used almost all of them over the years. Okay, the next is sometimes some of the email providers, they offer these pop ups for you. In other words, they have little snippet of code that you can put on your website. And then especially if it’s for like getting emails, you know, you’re trying to increase your email list with your pop up. So that’s the other thing that you need to know. Now alert boxes, you might say, well, if I have a pop up, why do I need an alert box, because everything we’re talking about is really about trial and error. It’s about testing. So while there’s data on this stuff for your own site, and what you have to offer people in who you’re reaching, you may find that your top alert box works better than your pop up on a certain page, or vice versa. So I like to try multiple things, and then see what the data tells me right? Which one is actually getting me leads, which one’s getting me people to give me their email list or some other, you know, piece of information. So that’s why you need popups. But I will tell you on my sites that are the most targeted, meaning they’re the most specific, it’s really, really

    granular content, right? It’s not real broad content, I get the most leads from that popup box. And I have other sites that the percentage is lower, because it’s a little bit more broad content in my popup offering is a little more general, it’s not super targeted to that audience, because I have a mixed audience, I’m going to another site that I run. So that’s the first thing is you need popups. And they do work. And these are the sorts of things that obviously you can get help from other people on. And this is something that I’ve helped people understand how to set these things up and how to really optimize them. The next thing that you need to do to get more leads from your website, is you need to look at what are you offering offering people so that they will give you their email list, right. So that they will tell you more about themselves. That’s where these freebies or other people call it a lead magnet, you know, or in there’s other words for it. That’s where that comes in. And if what you’re offering is working and you’re getting leads, great job, if it’s not doing much for you, then it might be time to consider. Once again, like I said, getting feedback from people that you already are connected with, from your email list, see what it is they really want to hear, hear from you or get from you, you know, what’s kind of like the thing that everybody asks you for that the thing you should focus in on, okay, but the way you use those freebies or lead magnets is one, you tell people in the pop up or the alert box, that of course, if they sign up for your email list, or whatnot, you will send them that freebie, you know, it could be a PDF, a checklist, all sorts of things. But another way to get more leads is to have exclusive content, or behind the scenes content that you only get if you sign up and join your email list or you sign up and join you know, your community or a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group or, you know, some other community group you have. So that is another great way to get more people to sign up is you have to give them show them that there’s something unique and special that they’re only going to get, you know, not everybody coming to your website can get. It makes sure it’s good. Don’t say that it’s going to be this exclusive thing. And then it’s lame, right? It has to have impact. It has to be something that people are going to be like, Oh my god, that is so good, right? That is so good. Like that’s so valuable. That helped me so much if that’s what you want people to say about your content. And then another thing that you can do and you do not have to do all of these strategies, right, you need to pick the ones that match best. If you’re a coach, or you’re a writer you may have you may mix and match these different ways to get more leads. So for instance, if you have copy, you know content like chapters of a book that are going to be coming out or maybe would have come out, you might share you know, a Extra chapter or maybe a new chapter you’re working on. So that would be kind of like an exclusive content will some people right in the page at the top of that page will have where you have to enter your email address to unlock that content, right to get that exclusive content. And if the person really wants it, they’re 100%, willing to provide their email to get it. So that’s the next thing that you need to consider on your website. So there’s really a few things here to make these types of things work for you to get more leads. The first is, you have to have them, at least some combination of a pop up, alert box, in line forms, unlocking exclusive content or behind the scenes. And usually you tie that with a freebie or magnet, but you don’t have to write it could just be like, Hey, girl, Hey, friend, hey, powerful woman or whoever you reach. This is it could be so Luthers, you know, if you do mystery writing or something, but you just have to try these things. And then you have to be tracking, you know, what’s your traffic and what kind of leads you’re getting in from what source on your website, hopefully, you’re doing that. But if you’re not, which there’s plenty of people that are not, it’s never too late to start. And it can be really simple. You can start a really basic spreadsheet, or even write it down in a document, and just put the month or the week or the day, however you want to track it. But overall, you’re just trying to look for patterns or trends in which ones are working for you. Or if you’re saying crickets nothing’s happened in here, then we start looking at why one, do you have these? Or which ones do you have? Which ones are you willing to try? And then what are you offering people? Maybe it’s not juicy enough? Maybe it’s not enough value for them to be willing to give you their information, when let’s be honest, we’re all on a lot of email lists.

    And if you have, if you struggle with why do I need to grow my email list, it’s because every other platform that you’re on, especially if it’s like social media platforms, the rules are always changing, you don’t own that group, if you will, they could literally shut it down on you, or they could move it or change something. But your email, list your contact information for people, some people text groups, right. But any contact information you have for people allows you no matter if you change email providers or website hosting companies, it allows you to reach those people as long as they’ve given you permission. So that’s why it’s important. And like I said, you need to know your your information, right, your your how many, how many you’re getting in from where. And then you need to try out other things. Here’s the good news. I talked to people all the time that just say, oh my gosh, I’m not tech savvy. I don’t know how to do any of this. Well, the first thing I want to say to you is take a deep breath. You don’t have to be tech savvy. But you do have to believe in yourself that you can learn the steps to do some basic things to make your website better. And I believe you can. I promise I’ve taught people over the last 15 or 20 years how to optimize their website, how to optimize their online presence, how to manage social in the way that they could maintain. And that’s usually because they’re not trying to do everything, they pick what works best, or where they’re most comfortable and where their audience is. So the good news is, I actually want you to do less, I want you to set up and optimize things. But then I want you to do less stuff. Because none of us can maintain this, you know, this feed this effort, because I’m going to tell you even happens to me, I end up exhausted two weeks, I’d go crazy busting my tail, and then I’m worn out. It’s because I’m in the middle of this big rebrand this big transformation with my podcast in my website, my offerings. So I’m in the midst of it. But I don’t want to continue this pace. I want to be able to just slow down and focus in on what I’m revising what I’m building. And I’m basing it on what people think wanted, instead of trying it all or keep trying it off, because I’ve been there. So the next thing is, like I said, you want to track your results. You want to test new things. You want to revisit if your freebie or lead magnet is relevant to people and if it’s of interest. So of course you can get feedback from your email list or a community. You can do a poll, you can ask people what is it that they would really love from you? Go back and see you know, comments people have given you about what really resonated. And just remember, don’t ask for too much information from your users or your visitors and make sure it’s enough value that they’ll want to trade or give you their email or information or join your group. are, what you’re offering them how you’re going to help them how you’re going to save them time, or whatever it might be. So I hope these four ways to get more leads from your website can help you, I get that this is high level. And I understand that sometimes it’s hard to take these concepts and dig down to your website. The good news is, there’s other people that can help you out there. I’m someone that’s offering web dot web optimization coaching sessions to help people really understand all the steps in 30 days to optimize their website, including this lead gen. And later this month, I am going to be pre registering people for my web optimization accelerator coming up in July. So there’s a lot of ways you can get help. And of course, there’s always YouTube tutorials. But if you’re like most people, we’re tired of those. And we just want a little more help. We want someone to hold our hand, so that you reach out, check out my website, Kristin fitch.com. Because I would love to help you with this stuff. If this isn’t something you think you can tackle on your own. As we wrap up today, I just want to leave you with a little bit of encouragement for your week and tell you that even when things are tough, even when you feel like you’re walking through a season of hard things, or just a season of busyness. Just know that, you know, it’s the relationships we have. It’s the time we spend deepening those relationships. It’s the time we spend, you know, getting closer to God in prayer and meditation. That really helps us live a richer life to really live a more peaceful, fulfilling life life filled with joy. And you know, we’ve had in our house, lots of things that we are walking through right now that are, you know, a little harder, you know, it’s kind of a day by day with some of the stuff going on. And then last week, actually, my dad just fell and was injured. He’s actually doing really well this week, which is amazing. But as he finds himself healing in the rehab center, while he might not want to be there, he’s really taking this time to be an encourager in that place with his roommate, and what he’s walking through in with some of his, the other people he’s met. He’s, you know, friendly with the nurses. But But I only see that I only share that piece of his story to tell you, even in the midst of our hard things, even in the midst of our trials and tribulations, even when we don’t feel our best, we can still show up and be a friend of someone else, we can still show up and be the love in the world the light that other people need. In one thing that’s become so clear, since this pandemic started, and so many things in the world just seem upside down is that people are lonely, they feel isolated, especially on social media, we feel more lonely than ever, a lot of people get off of it and feel worse than when they got on. Reach out to your friends make a new friend, just give somebody a hug, say hello. And in the rehab center, one of my dad’s friends that was visiting him talk to a man that was across the hallway in another room who was having a really hard time, just really, really a lot of sadness, a lot of loneliness. And he spoke to him and he prayed with me. And he he gave me his phone number and he said, you know if you need anything you call me. And you know, we’re going to do the same this week with him when I can get back in there tomorrow or the next day. But I only share this to say our websites are important. Optimization is important, getting our message out to people that it should matter to our stories. They’re important because we are going to have impact in people’s lives. But more so than that we’re going to have impact in people’s lives that we show up for. And we will make a difference. And so I just wanna remind all of us, well, I want to help you get your message to more people and connect with more people for your business. I even more so want to help you connect more deeply with other people and on a faith level. So here’s to an amazing week and to just take those minutes each day to do what you can to show up and be the light in the love in the world. And I mentioned this before, but I’m feeling website optimization coaching sessions now. Do you wish there was a way to optimize your online presence so you can get more traffic to grow your writing, speaking or coaching business easily in an authentic way. I know what it feels like to be all over the place showing up online and feeling frustrated with lack of growth. Then they learned the strategy and tactics that work to grow organic traffic and leads in and out in a more authentic way. Imagine if you knew how to create and build organic traffic online to help grow your audience with ease. So your website email list and community grows and converts without being salesy, sleazy or using high pressure tactics. That’s why I created this ops this website optimization coaching will where I’ll teach you the steps to get more traffic and leads from your website. You’ll be able to stop struggling with tech and know exactly what to do to grow organic traffic and get more leads. You’ll walk away with customized recommendations and a 30 day unique online growth roadmap with the exact steps to follow to grow your online audience. I was able to grow my all time pageviews to over 38 million and reach 10 million visitors for a brand I co founded. All using simple, easy to follow time tested organic strategies I learned along the way. So if you’re ready for your ideal audience to find you online, opt in to your list and connect with you without trying every new social media trend or spending so much time on tactics that don’t deliver. Then let’s dive in together. For a limited time I’m offering a summer promo. It’s a special price for the month of June that you can get a website optimization coaching session with me, head over to Kristin fitch.com for all the deets in my summer promo deal. I can’t wait for you to learn the steps to grow your audience using your website so you can get more leads with all the fuss overly salesy salesy copy and high pressure tactics instead are easy, repeatable and will align with you and your clients. So head on over and check it out because I would love to do a session with you and help you kickstart your online presence growth. If today’s show got you pumped about building your online traffic so you can grow your business. Let’s celebrate pop over and leave a review. Tell us what you loved about today’s episode or share this with another boss who’s ready to grow next level comm network with other entrepreneurs, authors, speakers, coaches and podcasters at my Facebook group to take your business to the next level. or head on over to Kristin Fitch that calm to find out more about my online growth system