[0:00] Have you ever been tempted to hire someone to create all of your social media graphics for you? Or even someone to just manage all your social media content so you don’t have to? Yeah, me too. As someone that used to help other business owners create copious amounts of content to share on social media, I’ve learned that hiring out this task without having what I’m going to share with you today on the podcast, is a complete waste of money.
[1:22] The inspiration for today’s episode
[2:14] Yong’s cautionary tale of outsourcing and how it cost her a ton of time and money
[2:59] What most service-based providers don’t do and how it’s a sign to look elsewhere
[4:53] How not knowing what you don’t know could cost you more time and money in the long-run
[5:12] The FIRST, and most important thing to look for when hiring out social media
[6:58] If potential companies or individuals don’t provide THIS, run the other way
[8:14] Why Yong doesn’t rely on social media and what she does instead
[9:27] Don’t let social media managers talk you into THIS and what always gets overlooked
[10:13] Offloading tasks like social media quickly is tempting + how the Myth of More derails so many
[11:15] Yong’s 2 recommendations when hiring + how taking back your social media narrative is key to its success
[13:12] Recap of the 2 Things you must do before delegating your social media
[14:51] If you’re ready to unearth your own Content Goldmine and turn your content into endless supplies of social media content and cash, schedule a complimentary call with her now.
[15:28] The 3-Step Framework Yong shared last week is a good starting point or hop on a call with Yong to talk about your content
[16:45] “Don’t get so wrapped up in offloading your social media that you forget about the vision of your business.”
[18:26] Wanna D.I.G. into your own content and turn it into cash and endless content for social media?
Next Week: School’s out for summer and it’s time to create a new relationship with time using Time Hacking
Yong Pratt 0:00
Have you ever been tempted to hire someone to create all of your social media graphics for you? Or even someone to just manage all your social media content so you don't have to? Yeah, me too. As someone that used to help other business owners create copious amounts of content to share on social media, I've learned that hiring out this task without having what I'm going to share with you today on the podcast, is a complete waste of money.
Yong Pratt 0:37
Have you ever felt like there was something missing in your business, something holding you back from the success you're seeking? If so you are not alone. For nearly 20 years, that's exactly how I felt as a business owner. It wasn't until I discovered Human Design, that it all became clear. And it turns out that I was the missing piece in my own business. Join me on this journey of discovering the real me and hear stories from other business owners, building businesses around all of their awesomeness. I'm Yong Pratt, and it's time my friend to Amplify Your Awesomeâ„¢.
Yong Pratt 1:22
Welcome back to the show Amplifiers! As always, I'm your host, Yong Pratt. I'm an Expert Gold Mining Guide and Amplifier of Awesome. We help business owners, mostly coaches, and course creators, ditch content overwhelm, create an endless supply of social media content. And we help them to monetize the content they have already created. Today's topic is really inspired by a couple of conversations that I had recently, I guess, in the past week or so with potential clients. What I do primarily in the beginning with my work with clients is to do this one thing. And not everybody is receptive to that. And I can totally relate to that.
Yong Pratt 2:14
To illustrate this point, I just want to share a story with you. Years ago, I went to a conference. It was hosted by a software that I was just learning to use was really in love with they had a whole community around it. And it was at this conference that I met a bookkeeping agency. They had accountants and you were assigned a bookkeeper of your own. You had conversations with them. And I thought, Oh, my gosh, this is it. I'd been hearing everywhere, that I need to outsource the things that I'm just not good at, or that don't really fit into my zone of genius. And to this day, bookkeeping and accounting and record keeping is one of these tasks, right? I tried for a long time to do it myself, and always ran into problems.
Yong Pratt 2:59
So when I met this company, and I met a couple of companies like this at this event. And I was really impressed. You know, they were going down their laundry list of things that they were going to provide to me. And I was super excited. Here's the problem, though. I hired them, we got to work. And I discovered in a very unfortunate sort of way, I'll just use that word. It was an unfortunate way that I just didn't know what I didn't know. There were so many questions that I probably needed to have asked and I just didn't know. So now I'm really big on helping the people who work with me look at things from a lot of different angles, look at the possibilities. And I like to ask them a lot of questions.
Yong Pratt 3:48
I really feel like when you go to hire somebody, especially somebody as essential as a social media manager, if they're not asking you a lot of questions, and they're giving you a laundry list of things that they provide, that's awesome. But I would just give you a caution, you know, use use my example as a cautionary tale because I hired this company thinking they were going to solve all of my problems, take off something from my plate that I didn't enjoy. I didn't really understand. I really wanted to understand it even though I did ask them some questions. You know, they were very quick to say yes. And of course, this is all looking in hindsight, right? I thought I was going to do this. I was one wanting to delegate it. I found this company. Awesome. Getting this off my plate. But quickly, it became a big headache because I was having to manage a lot of what they were doing, even though I had no idea what they were really doing and what I was told I was going to get back in return for my monthly payments I was not seeing.
Yong Pratt 4:53
So it took a long time to untangle myself and my business from this company. There was a lot. A lot of things that, again, I just didn't know what I didn't know. So here's what I want to say. When you're looking to hire for social media in particular, there's two things I actually want to share with you.
Yong Pratt 5:12
Number one is, you are so unique, you are so awesome. Your business is unlike anyone else's business. Yes, there might be similarities. But when they give you this cookie cutter, quote, unquote, strategy, because it worked for somebody else, it certainly does not mean it will work for you. And I hate to burst any bubbles that you had around this idea about this fairy tale, hiring a social media manager, and, you know, letting them call the shots. That's what I did with this booking keeping company. And it ended up costing me more than I had ever anticipated. It took a lot of time to manage, because I just allowed them to be the expert in my business, letting them guide me to a place without first asking me questions of what would work for me, you know, how do I feel about these things? You know, here's how we work. Is that going to work for you? Will something work better for you? right. They just have this cookie cutter strategy. And I find that with social media management in particular, there are some good companies out there. And they definitely do not come cheap, because they go through these processes with you, right? A lot of what I see are, you know, you basically provide images, or they create images for you. And then they just go post, based on the success of someone else's social media. They're really focused on vanity metrics. They're not necessarily focused on engagement. And they're just posting, to post. And to me, that is the biggest waste of time ever.
Yong Pratt 6:58
I also want to say that a lot of these companies will say they're going to provide you with X amount of graphics per month. That's awesome. Unless you have a specific strategy, and reason why you want to post so many times per week per platform, it may not land with your dream clients, right. There needs to be some sort of strategy. And you as the business owner, as the content creator, as the course creator as the coach, the consultant. If you're not invited in to this strategic planning phase, if that's not the first step, in the process, when you hire a company to manage your social media, I'm just going to tell you to run the other way. There are so many companies out there that can provide the service. However, if you don't have a good reason why. If you're just wanting to sell more courses, that's awesome. You can't always just be selling on your social media platforms, there needs to be a your social media needs to be a place where people can come to get to know like and trust you, they want to see what you're doing. They want to see what you're up to.
Yong Pratt 8:14
And I personally don't post a lot on social media, because I have I removed myself from that world, only because I primarily focus on personal relationships. I use social media as a way to find amazing people to connect with amazing people. And then I take it quickly offline. So if you were to go look at my social media content, you probably not going to see a ton of stuff. However, that doesn't mean that I'm not impacting the people that I want to impact. Because I've decided for myself in my business, that being relational off of social media has been more productive, more joyful, and just a better fit for me.
Yong Pratt 8:58
So when you're hiring via social media companies, you first of all want to make sure there's a strategy. They share the strategy with you. And they invite you to be part of the strategic planning. Because if you are not part of it, if your voice is not part of it, if the way that you create content is not factored in to how they're going to post on social media for you. It's definitely a waste of money.
Yong Pratt 9:27
And secondly, for those of you who have a ton of content already, if you're a course creator, if you're someone who loves video or audio, I know that you already have a ton of content. Why would you pay somebody else to create brand new content when you already have so much in your own content goldmine? So those are the two things I really want to point out that strategy is really important, but you need to be part of that strategy and part of that process. And who you are, what you believe your beliefs, your values, the way you want to engage with people, the platforms that you enjoy the platforms that you're going to use, all of that needs to be factored in to a plan.
Yong Pratt 10:13
And I know planning sometimes can feel overwhelming, it can feel like you know, I'm just not going to do it, I'm just going to post or I'm going to hire someone to post for me. From the outside, that may sound really good. And I have been there. Trust me. I really wanted to offload social media for so long, because I just didn't like doing it. It was long before I had any notion of content goldmining or looking at the content I had already created. Right. It was just about the myth of more. And if you didn't catch that episode, I will link it up in today's show notes at www.YongPratt.com/336. Because the Myth of More traps so many potential entrepreneurs, and potential course creators, potential coaches from reaching the right people, because we get into a trap of creating more and not not really tapping into the content and the gold you already have sitting on your hard drive or in the cloud, you have so much.
Yong Pratt 11:15
So again, I would, I would recommend that you get get involved in the planning process, if you're going to hire a social media manager, and really have them look at your content, right. But you need someone to look at your content who has an eye for this and can see the potential in your content. This is what I love doing with my clients. I love peeling back the layers. Digging into their content, looking at all the content they already have, and exploring new ways to not only share that content, again in lots of different ways but how you can monetize that content in ways you probably haven't thought of. It sometimes we need somebody outside of ourselves, to help us to see what is possible with our content. Don't be tricked into thinking you need to hire someone to do your social media for you. When you have content, you can, you can take back control of this narrative. You want to infuse yourself you want to infuse your personality, you want to use all of your awesomeness. And you just want to make sure that you're finding somebody who can help you see what's already there. Right? Sometimes we just don't see this like that. There's the saying, you're not able to see the forest through the trees, right? Sometimes we're so enmeshed and so engrossed in what we're doing that we don't look around to see, because we're just speeding through. We're creating more stuff. We're speeding through the forest, we're not taking a look at all the beautiful things that we've already created. All the beautiful things that have the potential to be something else to be delivered in a new way to reach a new client base. So my friend, those are my tips for you on hiring a social media manager:
Yong Pratt 13:12
You need a strategy number one. It needs to be personal to you. It cannot be cookie-cutter based on the performance of someone else's stuff. That may be a place to start, but it's not the place you want to end up. Your social media strategy should be unique to you. There may be overlaps and similarities to other people's but you are unique. Just remember that when you go in to meet these people, remember you. Don't lose you. In inside of, you know, being able to delegate something off your plate, don't be like me hiring that bookkeeping company. And being so enamored with the feeling...ahhh. I can finally just get this off my plate because that my friends may cost you more money than you realize and more time and more headache than you realize. So I want to save you from that.
Yong Pratt 14:05
And then number two, when you're going to hire, don't let someone talk you into creating brand new content. You don't need it. You really have enough content in your archives - in your goldmine. And you need someone who has the vision to see what that could become, and how you can reuse that in lots of different ways not only to reach people on social media, but to monetize that for you, because social media managers by and large, from what I've seen, are interested in vanity metrics. And they're interested in helping you post a gazillion times a day on multiple platforms. You definitely do not need to be doing that.
Yong Pratt 14:51
And if you are interested in diving in to a strategy with me, really unearthing your own Content Goldmine because I already know if you're in this group in my Facebook community, the Arena of Awesome. If you're listening to this podcast, you're someone who already has a ton of great content. And being able to tap into that is going to be your biggest source of potential revenue for your business, a source that you can tap into whenever you need to fund anything, whether it's personal or professional.
Yong Pratt 15:28
Last week, I shared with you my three step framework, for turning your content into cash, you can definitely start there. If you're wanting to go further in, you know that I am your person to help you see what is potential in your content. I would love to do that.
Yong Pratt 15:47
Will there be an investment in this? Absolutely. Will it maybe stretch some of you beyond what you think is possible? Yes, absolutely. But here's what I can say about that. If you front load, this idea of social media and content creation and content repurposing, if you can go into it with a solid strategy with something that's going to support you and your business, then that's definitely worth the time and money you're going to invest with me. Because after working with a ton of clients, helping them to see what's possible, especially monetarily, the majority of them are able to make back what they invest with me, in a very short span of time, and that my friend can be your fate as well if you choose to work with me.
Yong Pratt 16:45
I would love for us to work together to really dig in, create a plan that's going to work with you. And then you know, when we create the strategy, if you want to continue to work with me, that would be awesome. I would invite that I would cherish that I would, I would be privileged to do that. If, however, you want to take that strategy, and then go hire a social media manager, awesome. We can work together to create a plan that's going to help guide someone else to take over that process for you. But don't get so wrapped up in offloading it that you forget about the vision of your business. And the vision of your business needs to be so tightly wound in to your social media content and into a strategy so that people really can see the real you. They see that you're not just posting to post yours. They're seeing that you want them to engage with you. So my friends, if you are ready to unearth your very own Content Goldmine and do it in a way that supports you, that feels good to you, that reflects who you are, and all the awesomeness that you bring into the world, I would love to invite you to schedule a content intensive with me where we really D.I.G. into your content. We really D.I.G. into all the ways you can monetize it, and all the things you can do to to really dig up what you've created, and make it new again, and share it in lots of different ways. And in ways that are going to reflect you and your values.
Yong Pratt 18:26
If you're interested in that you can head to today's show notes www.YongPratt.com/336. Reach out to me there or just come on over to my Facebook community, the Arena of Awesome on Facebook, and we can start a conversation because the thing that lights me up the most. Seeing the light in the people the light in the eyes of the people that I work with, when they realize just how much gold they actually have at their fingertips and no one's bothered to show them what's possible.
Yong Pratt 19:04
That my friends is what I would love to do with you. I look forward to diving into your business into your content into the possibilities of all the ways you can use that to connect with more people and of course to monetize all that gold. Okay, my friends, I will catch you on the next episode. Cheers!
Yong Pratt 19:26
Thanks for tuning in, do the Amplify Your Awesomeâ„¢! podcast. Let's continue this conversation inside my Facebook community, the arena of awesome while it's still free and open to new members, come share your biggest takeaways and Aha. Plus, every week inside the arena, you'll get access to me and I may even share content I don't share then you are out. Until next time, my friend go out there today and Amplify Your Awesomeâ„¢!
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