How to Boost Business Visibility with Community Engagement

[00:00:00] Jen McFarland: the women conquer business show is an educational. How to women in business podcast that features stories, marketing news and real life experiences from fun and friendly. Jen McFarland and Shelley Carney. Join us as we dive into the details. So you can slay marketing, overwhelm, streamlined processes and amplify your impact.

You'll learn strategies and tactics, leadership skills, and practical advice from successful women entrepreneurs. To help you grow, nurture, and sustain your business.

[00:01:18] Shelley Carney: And we're here. Hello?

[00:01:20] Jen McFarland: Hello, and welcome to women conquer business. I'm Jen McFarland joined by Shelley Carney. And thank you so much for being here today. We're going to talk about how to boost your business visibility just with community involvement and getting out there and showing up.

[00:01:38] Shelley Carney: Hi. So today I'm in a different studio because it snowed like crazy and the roads are covered in snow.

And here in New Mexico, we are iffy on our snowplowing ability. So it's a little bit more like. What, if we wait until afternoon, it'll melt. So just letting you know. So we don't do things in the mornings when it's snowed the day before, basically.

[00:02:04] Jen McFarland: Which is actually better than Portland, where we have one snowplow.

And if you, if there's even a hint that it could possibly maybe snow, then schools are closed and then. The it doesn't actually snow and all the kids are home. Although, during COVID there's really no snow days, anymore. But it's interesting. It's interesting for me, as somebody from Idaho to live someplace where snow is such a big deal,

[00:02:31] Shelley Carney: It is a big deal.

Yeah, you grew up where it snows all the time, right? It

[00:02:35] Jen McFarland: used to. Yeah. Yeah. And Boise, it snows quite a bit. So yeah. So what's been happening over there. You want to talk about the book? I do. What else is

[00:02:44] Shelley Carney: up? So we did get the book published Toby and I yeah his Toby says is east facing driveways already melted.

He gets he's in an area where they don't get much in the way of heavy weather. We he's 10 minutes away from me, but the weather is different. It's very odd. So on Sunday, last week we finished our final edit and uploaded the book to Amazon and goodbye, hope to see you soon. And the next morning it was for sale.

So that's how quickly it can happen. It's a simpler process than it was when we did it the first time, a couple of years ago in 2020, we published a book and it was a little more. Eh of a mass, but this time is simpler. Amazon's made some improvements. So it's a lot quicker to publish a book because I'm going to share with you, the book that I'm talking about is called women in podcasting, the messages and methods interviews.

Jen. And I are both in this book. This is when I met Jen for the first time. It's a wonderful interview that where we're talking about, small business and women in podcasting and what's going on at the conference. And Jen was a speaker at the conference and the a sponsors. So she was very involved in the, she podcasts live 20, 21 conference.

And we. Got a lot out of that conference, including 18 interviews with wonderful women. And we took those 18 interviews, made podcast episodes out of them and then transcribe them and put all the transcriptions together in a book Toby. And I also did a couple of shows, one to create the introduction chapter and one to create the epilogue chapter.

And then I wrote my own chapter answering all the questions that. That I had asked the women and then we put it all together in a book and we created a cover and boom,

[00:04:46] Jen McFarland: and then this link that I just put up online, this Atticus, that's what you used. Correct? We actually

[00:04:53] Shelley Carney: didn't need it or you didn't

[00:04:56] Jen McFarland: word it was, you did.

So Microsoft word allowed you to do this whole process.

[00:05:01] Shelley Carney: All of it. Yeah, because they accept doc X now. Compared to what it used to be used to have to get it translated into a mobi file. And it was a pain and now it's super easy. So I encourage anybody. Who's a content creator who's thinking about, I'd like maybe to put a book up on Amazon, how hard is it? It is so much easier than it used to be.

So give it a try. That is

[00:05:25] Jen McFarland: crazy. I'm going to add that into the chat. You can use Microsoft word to get your book on Amazon. That's amazing to me. Make sure that you do that, make sure that you check out this book. If I do say so myself there's at least one chapter, that's amazing.

No, I'm just kidding. All of them are amazing because I know I met most of the people that you interviewed. And they were, everybody was great. That was a wonderful experience overall. And I think that seeing you release this book gave me a lot to think about, because I have, I've had two years worth of shows.

There've been some really great moments. So I've been thinking about how to. Honor what the show has done. And some of the cool things we've talked about in a way that we can share it with people. So I think that this is very inspirational. I think it's also, the fact that you can just make a book like, and it's, you don't have to be super technical, I think is very inspirational for a lot of people.

And I know that a lot. Of my clients and people that I talked to would be super into it.

[00:06:25] Shelley Carney: So if you're, if you just want to go straight to it and find it really easy, you can type in our little URL here, books dot AGK media.studio. And that will take you to all of the books that Toby and I have written all two of them.

And then you can pick this one, Hey

[00:06:40] Jen McFarland: check. Better than zero.

[00:06:42] Shelley Carney: Hey, and also. If if you have Kindle unlimited, you can read it for free. Yeah. Oh, wow. That's great. Yeah. Look at that.

[00:06:53] Jen McFarland: What was I? My brain left me. Oh, so what I've been working on, so I just I'm and this is why I'm Ooh, what's going on?

Hey, I just got back into town last night from. Southern Oregon, where I was teaching digital marketing. I teach for a lot of small business development centers, around the state so that people can learn about so people can learn about digital marketing. These are small business owners. I had two people.

This was so interesting. I had two people in these classes. Typically those classes are for people who want to grow their business. And I had two people in there who were like we don't really want new customers. We don't know why we need more. And that was like, what? So we spend a lot of time and I was like, so think about this in the future attention to this for your future time, and a lot of it, what people don't understand is. Word of mouth and referrals. They do tend to run out at some point. So you have, even if you have a great referral pipeline, if it's not something that's super formalized and you don't have a contract or an agreement to bring people in all the time that can really run dry.

Like you only have so many friends, they only have so many friends. That's why you need marketing is some way to stay front of mind. So that was really interesting to me. I pay attention to a lot of the questions and. So if you have resistance to marketing understand that at some point you may need it.

The other thing that was cool was the, and it was the same two folks in there who were saying we also really know who we like and we don't. People that we don't like. And it was like, that's the beauty of marketing is that you can attract the people that you do. And then the way that you talk about things like your values and the services you offer and what it is that you do, it will naturally begin to appeal to.

The people who are most aligned with what it is that you do and how you do it. And that really seemed to resonate with them a lot too. So it's a really interesting, I love those classes because I always learn so much about where business owners are, in terms of like marketing and like what it means to do marketing.

So that was really cool. And then I left. Day after tomorrow. So I feel like I'm here to do the shows, like a brief, like little dip back into my reality, and then I'm going to leave again. And and one of the reasons that this show is on the topic that it is that something else really cool happened a few days ago.

But I will leave that for the main training portion, I guess of it. What do you have in terms of breaking news? Oh I'll talk about the script and all of that stuff. Or I'll just

[00:09:26] Shelley Carney: briefly mention that Toby and I are starting a new book series and we're doing it by interviewing experts in digital marketing.

So we hope that you, once again, Jen will be involved in this project and we're interviewing digital marketing experts and consultants, and we have the same. Set of questions, same 15 questions for each person. And then we will take each question and make that into a chapter. So we'll take the best answers from people and put it together into a chapter.

Look for that this summer, and we do hope that you'll be involved in that the other breaking news thing, or maybe I'll save that for tweak of the week. I'll save my DC.

[00:10:08] Jen McFarland: You have any breaking news? Did you say descript? Is that what you were saying? You're going to save that for the yeah. Cause that's so if you're not familiar with descript and maybe we'll just skip ahead then to the main meat of the show and we can both talk, cause that was going to be my tweak or my breaking news two is so if you're not in podcasting or content creation, you may not know about this program called descript.

And it's. Description, you just take off the own. It's just the script.com and it's a really powerful tool that a lot of people use think about it. If you have anything, any videos or anything like that, that you want to edit we'll put a pin in that and then we'll come back to that at the end.

Cause they've been adding a lot of cool things that you may be interested in as business owners. And we can talk about that at the end of the show. So the topic that we're talking about today is how to boost business visibility and it's about community. So if you think about your community as the people around you the people in your local community could be your online community, could be your business community, or a combination of all of it.

I like to think that for me, it's a combination of everything. So it's like all the people I've known forever. And then. All the new people I've learned. And then people that I've never actually met before that are on social media, they could be watching or listening right now or both. And then I've had some really amazing things happen in my business since starting that like I'd never, ever expected.

So let's just talk for just a minute. So when. I was walking on Sunday after, after the documentary film crew left my house, I was walking to lunch with my husband and I said, who would have thought five years ago when I started my business, that I would have met a former miss Singapore. And had been contacted by a European e-book company to, to share content on there.

And that a documentary film crew would want to fill me to talk about digital marketing. And he's we're both for this would never be. Have happened before. It was like, not even on the radar of possibilities, when you say, oh, I'm leaving my job and I'm starting a business. And anything's possible.

Like when you think anything's possible, there's still things out there that happened that are you're like, but really anything is possible. Okay. And I think that anybody who started a business, you probably all have that same thing. Like all of these little mini wins that have happened. And each thing that happens can really help you advance your business.

Or sometimes we all make decisions that are mistakes that take a lot of time that maybe don't boost it. And it's all part of the journey. When wouldn't you say.

[00:12:56] Shelley Carney: Yeah. And it's what makes it fun and interesting too, because things that you never would have imagined can pop up.

[00:13:03] Jen McFarland: Yeah. And that's the thing.

And so I guess, To start or star up for whatever. Like I thought about it this week where I was like, what would happen if I actually like, had like a PR person or anything like that. So I want to begin by saying, I'm talking about organic. Business boosting this isn't, I haven't paid for any of this.

It's just, and I always look at it as serendipity or kismet or whatever you want to call it. And at the same time, I have to be really Frank and say, and it's a lot of hard work, so there's two sides of it. When things happen, so having a podcast. Was maybe one of the biggest thrills ever, has been really great for me.

It's been really fun and I've learned a lot and it was my friend, Betsy Carver, who I've known for 20 plus years, who said, you know what, John, you should probably have a podcast. That'd be fun. And so I'm always grateful to her. I think about her in relationship to the podcast a lot, because it was just a friend who made like an offhand comment.

And I was like, I'm going to say, yes, And so I started doing that and right after I started the podcast. As business owners we get pitched. Sometimes it seems like we get pitched like 25 times a day, and most of it is I'm sorry to say most of his junk and it's that's fake or it's spam or whatever.

And then it's really about knowing what to say yes to. So when I went to. When I heard from this European company and they said, so we're starting to do audio lessons. We like the stuff that you're teaching. W can we put this on our platform? I was like, okay. What has to happen? And I had, my editor helped me.

Editing the audio to meet their standards. And then I didn't think about it cause they were supposed to pay me. And I was like I don't know if this is real or not. I researched it. It looked real. And then six months later they're like so we need to know where to deposit the money.

And I was like, So what you want. So this is the long con, right? Like you want to know, I bank it for me.

Now you want the bank information, your fake, so I emptied out the bank account, sent them the merchant details and $300 showed up in my bank account and I was. What else would you like me to make? Because then it was like a real thing. And so it was one of it's, and that was a company I'd never heard of.

Nobody's ever heard of it. And they continue to ask me for things and all of the old stuff is up there. And then and the new stuff. Yeah. I hadn't said yes to that. If I just discarded it as like more junk than I would have missed this great opportunity, that's turning into something, bigger for my business.

And can at times bring me clients because it's large companies that are on. Learning things. And if they like me, they have access to reach out to me. So that was one of the first things that ever happened. That was, let me ask you

[00:16:10] Shelley Carney: this. I have recently been contacted by a company that says they're launching online learning.

Platform. And they would like learning bits from people and they reached out to me on LinkedIn. So what should be my vetting process? What should I do to make sure that this is legitimate and something I want to be involved in?

[00:16:31] Jen McFarland: Yeah. So for me, when I do this, whether it's an email or through LinkedIn is a two-step process, right?

So first of all, the first pass is this even interesting, because if you don't have any interest in doing it, then. Then don't do it. The second pass then is. Researching the person who messaged you and seeing if you can find out more information about them and what they've accomplished, and then researching the company.

And if it's really impossible to find the company that's a big red flag. And if you research the person and the person that's showing up in your inbox or in your. In your messages, does it seem congruent with the person that you find out online, or you can't find that person anywhere online, or you can't find that person in connection with the company that they say that they're from, then those are all big red flags that you just step away and say no.

If it. Alliance and the research pays off and as something you're interested in, then it's worth a call or a conversation. But they have to be willing to talk to you and explain it to you and answer your questions. So that's like kind of the second rung is like, are you going to meet with me? What does that conversation look like?

[00:17:48] Shelley Carney: Alright, that's helpful.

[00:17:49] Jen McFarland: Thank you. And then after that, after they tell you what it is if you want to do it, then you just do it. But that's the process that I go through. I'm also the person online who, when I see reviews like online reviews, I also, when I'm vetting a company, I will research if those are real people, who've left real.

And I know it sounds dumb, but there are a lot of fake reviews out there. So make sure that those people are real. And that will tell you a lot about any company that you want to do business with. Especially, if somebody has an offer, that seems too good to be true. Fast forward to let's fast forward to eight months ago.

I wrote a blog post about a program called ClickFunnels and ClickFunnels. For those of you who don't know is sales funnel. Run by a man named Russell Brunson, who a lot of people have heard of. He writes a lot about sales funnels. So what a sales funnel is really your sales process. So as a business owner, you do marketing and visibility and you talk to people and you're trying to get your message out to as many people as possible.

And. Any process that you have now is technically a sales funnel. You maybe talk to a lot of people and then some people are interested. So you've narrowed down for maybe talking to a hundred people and then maybe only 20 are interested. And then you find a way that you can continue to talk to those 20 people.

And then after that, maybe only five people are super interested and then you figure out how to convert. A portion of those five people into customers. And that fundamentally is a sales funnel. Like you have a process to bring new people in and you figure out a way to convert a handful of those into clients.

And then if you're bigger, you scale that up and and all that kind of stuff. So what happens is when people start a business, especially if they want to start an online business, they can get lured into something like a ClickFunnels, which is great software. If you're an established business and you have a team and people who really know how to write sales copy and who really know and understand what it looks like to have an online sales process.

Most of the companies that I work with don't need that it's really sophisticated. It's all these upsells and down sells and, squeeze pages and things, and if none of that makes any sense to you, you're not ready for click funnels yet. Like long story short the blog post I wrote it was a review of click funnels based on.

Personal information, personal dealings with clients. I've never been a customer of ClickFunnels, but I've stepped into a lot of situations with the software where it's not working for people. And they say, Jen, please fix this for me. It's really expensive software. It's like starts at a hundred dollars a month and it can be up to, I think they now have a top tier that's $3,000 a month.

And then the middle tiers, like 300. I wrote this blog post out of frustration, because there are a lot of simple features that like any shopping cart should have anybody who's buying online, or if you're selling something online, these are features that every piece of software should have, and it's been very buggy for many of them.

Clients. And I got tired of fixing it all the time and I kept saying, oh, I should really write a blog post about this. I should really write a blog post about this. And my friends were like, you really should. So I spent, I don't even know hours and hours. Cause I felt really passionate about this.

I felt like this was something that wasn't serving my people and that I really needed to talk about. And I love to write as much as I love podcasting and video. I love to write. It's like my first love. So I sat down and I worked on it for a really long time. Like I, I wrote chunks of it out over a, probably a two months.

And then I had several people read it. And then I posted it and I shared it. And then I worked on the search engine optimization for like off and on for like months, just kept tweaking it. Then I forgot about it because I created other content and I moved on and then.

Unbeknownst to me, this article that I wrote is like at the top of Google, for some terms related to click. And it happened. So then last week, a documentary film company found me and messaged me on LinkedIn. And I did the same process. I just described of is this for real? Who is this? Are you just trying to get money from me?

And I researched the person, the company, like all kinds of stuff. And I was like, sure, I'll talk to. And we met by zoom. And then last Sunday, I had one filmmaker from Portland who basically piped the interview into these directors who were in Dallas, who were asking me questions about. Digital marketing.

And they're following a lot of online marketers around and I'm the, you, Shelly said you were like the mom. I prefer to say I was the voice of reason. That I was the person who was sitting there saying this is what digital marketing is. This is what a sales funnel is. This is how this works.

And. And so people think like, how does this stuff happen to you, Jen? Everybody asks me. I'm like, I just make the things that I care about. And that's what I think every business owner needs to do is if you feel passionate about something, if you care about something, make it, do it. Because if you just keep thinking about it, you're never going to show up for it.

And a lot of people don't understand that there's no such thing as an overnight success. Overnight success happens over months or years. And just like you've learned everything that, all of your expertise takes time to develop. So does knowing and reaching out and doing stuff and having people find you.

So if I had written a blog post and nobody noticed it right away and I was like I'm never going to blog again.

[00:23:58] Shelley Carney: Oh, we only had one person watch her show. I'm not going

[00:24:01] Jen McFarland: to do the livestream. Yeah. We only, I'm not live streaming. Nobody's watching then it, what is the world missing out on? Exactly. What is the world missing out on? So my advice to every business owner out there is if you want to boost your businesses visibility, if that's something that you really want to do, you need to find the ways to show up and show up consistently and show up in a way that makes sense to you.

That allows you to do. For me, that's blogging and talking about things in digital marketing that may seem counterintuitive or at times controversial that are really just based in common sense.

[00:24:40] Shelley Carney: Let me add to that because you brought up the word controversial. If you have a polarizing opinion, then you're going to get more notice.

And that is, I think what Jen has done here and a polarizing opinion just means you take a firm stance. And maybe you disagree with the cultish rah people, and that's okay. If you have the reasons to back up your opinion, and you, do you have that logic that supports your opinion and it is polarizing because people are going to say I like that.

Or I like that. Which one. Is the right one for me. And that draws that extra attention, which it's done in this case.

[00:25:25] Jen McFarland: It has. And I think that. And for me, I say, look, I'm not for everybody. And if it doesn't work for you I really truly hope that you find the person that it works for. It doesn't mean that you are lacking in anything.

It just means that it's not a fit, and there are a lot of people in marketing who are different than that. And I think that what I'm really speaking out against and what makes me controversial is that. I don't think that if you disagree with me, it means you're lacking something. I'm not constantly marketing.

Like I am sharing some things about marketing, but I'm not always selling to you. I'm not always marketing to you. I'm sharing what I know. And if that's interesting to you, then please do come and. And join me, in, in what it is that I do. And that is what boosts visibility is. If you're just selling all the time, if you're just hammering at people all the time about the same stuff, it's boring, people get bored, they want to hear, they want to know what's in it for them.

And one of the ways that you can really think about what's in it for other people and boost your visibility. Answering customer questions talking about the things that you've seen that are infuriating or that you wish would be different and offering solutions. That was the other thing that I do in every blog post or everything is like you offer a solution.

So I said, ClickFunnels is for you if XYZ. And if that doesn't sound like you, then here's some alternatives. That I personally think are better, and it's about solving problems. It's always gotta be about solving problems. So when you show up consistently, you begin to build community around your ideas and your thoughts, and then that adds to your ability to boost your businesses visibility.

And then also. And so it's about sharing what you're doing and then sharing what other people are doing in a way that amplifies all communities and helps other people. And I think that when we talk about, on an organic level, like how this stuff really happens, how you increase your visibility, it's about showing up.

It's about helping other people. And it's about doing something consistently that does all of those types of things.

[00:27:57] Shelley Carney: Now, one of the things that it is a community for both of us, is she podcasts? That's where we met. We met a lot of great ladies there on another one might be a. A mentorship group or a monthly online event that you attend a mastermind where you might meet other people.

One of the women that I interviewed at she podcast, Melanie Hirshhorn. I met her before that in a mastermind. So I was able to, bring her in for an interview as well. Sure. Doing those things finding those community events that you can participate in, then you can connect with people and then you can collaborate with them.

You can work with them in some way, or they may know people that they can refer to you once they find out what you do. So it is a, it's a way to just instigate some activity, right? Some shake things up and say, I'm not getting any action right now. How can I get some action? Maybe I should go investigate this meetup group, or maybe I should go to my chamber of commerce and they're having an event, maybe I should go to that, just, we have to continually try to do activities and participate with people and build those relationships because that's where more business is going to come from.

[00:29:20] Jen McFarland: Absolutely. And I love this comment. People are more likely to accept your opinion, if your opinion helps them solve a problem. And I think that's a hundred percent true, on an earlier show. I think we talked about how search engine optimization or getting found on Google is about answering customer questions and.

That is entirely what I base a lot of my business on I'll go into the sheet podcast, Facebook group, and people ask all kinds of questions and I provide answers. The answer is never download my free ebook, my answer is always like here's a resource or here's some help and, and all that kind of thing.

And. And then you become that, that resource. And then when people need it for something else, it becomes a natural extension. Oh, maybe I should talk to Jen or maybe I should talk to Shelley. And I think that's entirely true. I think that we all have opinions. We all have things that we do that are different.

And what we can do is help each other help one another, like another way of putting it is this. When I met you and you were like, oh, I help. I help people understand technology. And I work with mid-career entrepreneurs. That one, one person would have been like one side of Jen could have been like that's what I do.

And then you just end the conversation, or it could be the way that, that I look at it truly, which is. Oh, wow. I do the same thing. Tell me more. And then you figure out how you can communicate and collaborate because no two people helps all the same people and no two people does everything the other one does.

And so a lot of times boosting business visibility means. Talking to and collaborating with the people who are in the same industry as you, because that's where there's a lot of opportunity because we're all helping customers and clients, and we can send people to each other. If we don't just look at it as I have to have all of the clients.

[00:31:18] Shelley Carney: And we can't anyway, because you're never, we, we actually do very different things that we found out. Yeah. We, if you look at it broadly, we do the same thing, but we very much focus on Encore, entrepreneurs and livestreaming, and you very much focus on helping people to get their marketing set up for their small business and not really focusing on live streaming and all that.

But really focusing on the automation tools and all of the things that are working and what they still need to add in. It's totally

[00:31:46] Jen McFarland: different. Totally different. And here's the thing like I've spent the last, like over the last two or three days, I've gotten, I think two or three requests for web development, things that I can do, but it's just I'm stepping back from that for awhile.

And I've just been like, oh, you need to talk to this person. You need to talk to this person. Somebody comes to me for live streaming to send them to you, stuff. And that's how you boost visibility too, because then almost invariably the emails I've sent out, to my colleagues. So they're like, okay, so what are you doing now?

So I can send people to you. That's part of how all of this works. And I know a lot of people who don't operate like that. And the truth is just like you said, Shelly, we cannot help all the. We just not possible. We should never try. We shouldn't even try. And I think there are a lot of people who come at things from this place of like lack or scarcity.

And I can tell you, like, when I started my business, I helped some people that I shouldn't have, like I should have said no. And anytime that like little. Thing happens in the pit of your stomach. Listen to that, like what we're talking about. I don't think about the opposite where somebody came to me with an opportunity and I researched it so I could do it.

Let's just make it happen. The flip side of that is someone comes to you with an opportunity and you're like, I don't know. And if you just let that but I need the money, override everything. You can get yourself into situations that really don't serve you or the person who is coming to you.

And I think that. I think that's really important. Oh, Heather's lights. Wolf. Is this happening now? Yes, Heather, it's happening right now happening. It's all happening right now. Please send us your questions and thank you for watching and hopefully listening. So if. Yeah. So I think that what you have to think about as a business owner, it's really complicated when you're talking about boosting business visibility.

It isn't all about social media. It's about building these relationships with people in an offline way, that you talk to people and you do things with them and you find ways to collaborate with them. And. Then you're actually raising community for more people. It's not just about what am I going to get out of it.

It's about what are you going to get out of it? How are we all going to help each other? And how are we going to get things out to. That's

[00:34:10] Shelley Carney: right. That's right. And that's how you build a strong community, because if you are the leader and you are offering service to other people, then other people will see that and start to offer service as well.

And we all help each other and we grow stronger because of that. We talked a little bit about polarizing opinions and. Who are we going to work with? We can't work with everybody. We really want to narrow it down, right? It can. That's one of the strategies of marketing is to narrow down who is your ideal client and really focusing on.

Those people and having them come to you, because if you're just like, I can help anybody, like Jen said, you may end up in a bad situation that you didn't want to be in.

[00:34:55] Jen McFarland: Absolutely. And I think that, and Heather's talking about, how. Do I need to slide into DMS, so sometimes you do need to slide into DMS.

If you have something additional that you want to share that maybe you don't want to share with everybody. I think that what's happening is that a lot of people set up these and you can do this. It goes against the terms of service to do these automations in people. DMS especially on LinkedIn, you can set up an automation, but people hate that.

Like, when people want to connect with me now, I'm like, are you a real person? I asked somebody that yesterday. And she was like, I absolutely am. And I absolutely understand why you're asking me that. Because one of the things that I don't like is when people connect with me and then they try to sell.

To me immediately in VMs. So it is about like picking and choosing that time when you want to like talk to somebody offline and that's really the best time to do it. Building a lot of relationships, from LinkedIn. I agree with you, Heather. She said, I build a lot of relationships offline from LinkedIn, but Instagram seems a lot more difficult.

And I do think that. And so for those of you who don't know, Heather's lights, will she is like basically the vegan accountant. Think she's the person to know if you're creative and you have some tax questions or some financial questions she's really smart. And I think that part of it is that oh.

So did she say, oh my God, I hate that, Jen. It happens to me daily. She's talking about people selling and your DMS. I do think that Instagram is a tough nut to crack for a lot of people with visibility. I think it depends a lot on. The industry that you're in if it is a good industry for Instagram, like I think Instagram is great for visual stuff.

I think it's great for podcasters. If you're making audio grams and things like that. I also think that. It's about going and you can do that same level of networking with Instagram. It just takes a lot more work. It seems like because it's not really the platform where people are like, Hey, I met this person.

Do you want to meet this person? It's just, doesn't seem like it's the type of platform that does that. What do you think,

Shelly?

[00:37:07] Shelley Carney: I don't find it. User-friendly I never have Instagram as a place to post your photos and look at other people's photos. Bend the way it is. And I've been trying to use it more.

I've been trying to promote things a little bit more and connect with people that, for instance, people that I met through she podcasts but in some of them use Instagram a lot more. They leave messages and things, and then I'll find them days later. Oh, I didn't even see it, because I just, I'm not really familiar with the platform and I get lost in it.

I prefer, if you really want to get ahold of me, please email me. I have this DDA. And if you want to send me a LinkedIn message, I will see that. And also LinkedIn will email me and say, Hey, you got a message. So definitely I'll see that. But with Instagram every now and then I'll say, oh, there is a little number on my phone.

Maybe I should look at, see what's going on Instagram, but I get lost in it and I don't find it user-friendly so it's just not one of my favorites.

[00:38:08] Jen McFarland: I think it depends on how you want to do it. So the people I know who've been really successful with Instagram have. Like advocates or ambassadors, they have more people that are helping you build your credibility and influence through the platform.

A previous episode that you could listen to actually is, and it's on YouTube as well as an interview. It's with the COVID-19 project. And it's about teen entrepreneurs who started a new. Project and new business where they are mentoring kids around the world. And they go through in that show and break down exactly how they're reaching out to people.

And, but they had they had all these volunteers who were going out and talking to people. And that was how they found me was they messaged me on Instagram and said, Hey, can we be on your show? Take a look at our profile, all of this stuff. And then I did the same thing I did before, where I, checked them out.

Are they real? And all that kind of stuff. So there's really. Like a, I won't say a formula, but there is a way that you can increase engagement on Instagram. But you do have to it does take some work. I had somebody else who I knew that, the stickers and planners industry is a big deal.

A lot of people like to fill out their like business planners and their weekly planners. And it's it was a thing on Instagram where. People just go crazy for the stickers and then they would send people to like, the places to get them. And they'd all talk about specials. So there seemed to be all these micro-communities in Instagram, and it's about finding that and then cultivating relationships so that you have real fans, I'm not talking about like fake fans and then it really helps you build that credibility.

For me, Instagram is just fun to look at pictures. I haven't really found it to be like enriching in terms of generating clients. But that's just me.

[00:39:53] Shelley Carney: And it's still something that Toby does a lot that he enjoys. And he's gotten some results from it is linked Facebook groups that are specific to an interest.

Now he belongs to a couple of Facebook groups and they're usually product related for him. One is about surfaces photography surfaces for small set photography, and he belongs to two different groups. Put out by the people who sell that product. And there are the. People in there they're constantly posting pictures.

Oh, I took this picture with this surface and here's what it looked like when I set it up. And here's how I Def, and they have a whole lot of conversation going on because they're all involved in that as a hobby or even a profession. And they'll ask him, where did you get that tripod or where did you get that light Stan?

And he will send them to our Amazon store and they'll usually buy something. A little bit of that going on, but again, that takes a lot of time and effort on the person's part to be in those groups and making those connections. It does.

[00:40:55] Jen McFarland: I'm in a good group on LinkedIn called ReadySet pivot.

It's a great group and there's a lot. I like LinkedIn groups better because they're not quite, I don't, it doesn't require as much time. But we do have people so get Sean says she gets several connects and instant sales in mail, I do too. And like I said, at the beginning I researched them and see if it's going to be fruitful or not.

And there are a lot of people though, who just go for the sale a little too quick for me. And that's an instable. Honestly, I'm not really interested in that question here. I have a question here from Heather. I was in a clubhouse room yesterday, discovering, discussing, selling on Pinterest, but I don't know how to build community through Pinterest, especially in the financial space.

So Pinterest traditionally has been fabulous, really great for bloggers and. Content creators. And I have a lot of people on Pinterest connected to me. I had, I got some help setting up my Pinterest. I don't know a lot about it in the financial space, but it's like anything. So the difference between Pinterest is a lot more like YouTube than other social media.

It's it actually has if you doing how to, you want to be on YouTube, because that's where the DIY addicts I'll go. If you want to buy something, a lot of people go to Pinterest actually to research products and buy. So it's like. Most social media, isn't a transactional channel. That's why it's like people dip into your InMail and try to sell to you.

And you're like on social media and you're like, oh, I don't even want that right now. People actually go 38. I think it was like 38% of people go onto Pinterest to buy something. And that's how that's part of their research for a product. So it's a great place to, to sell something on Pinterest and they've.

Phenomenally easy to set up a store. Now you can have promoted pins. Although the promoted pins are costing more than they were. About two years ago when I first started on Pinterest. And it's a good, it's a good place to drive links. Pinterest pins that you put up on Pinterest, they, you can get backlinks for that.

They show up in search on if you post to Facebook, cause Facebook and Google don't really like each other that much that Pinterest and YouTube, they show up. All the time. And so yeah, it's a great place to go find stuff and to post stuff, there's nothing wrong with setting up your Pinterest and adding things.

It is like YouTube, where you have to do a little bit of search research and if you're answering questions then that's a big. That's a big way to do it. Heather's writing a lot of stuff in here. Let's see. Let's see. I find clubhouse is a great place for community engagement, but it can also be a time suck and a waste of time when you try to be strategic.

It's a crap shoot. Yeah, I, I. Clubhouse is fine. But I do find that sometimes we'll clubhouse. It is a lot of people who are all trying to do the same thing. And I did find that for me, I was wasting time. So I didn't stick with it. It's also not a great it's. Is, are you the same way, Shelly?

Absolutely. It's fine. If that's your thing. I think that the, that if you're really trying to sell maybe to other podcasters, it probably is a good place. I, I just don't know. I feel like clubhouse is something that's just going to get absorbed by somebody else at some point, because it's a little limiting really in terms of the offer.

Then Heather says that she uses Pinterest to collect cute haircuts and looks for weird. But that's, what's so great about Pinterest is if you put your stuff on Pinterest and there are people who are interested in finance, if there are people who are interested in what it is that you do, there's a board out there for that, and you can be.

Involved in that community and add to that community. I would say that if I were to do, so Heather is, the vegan queen and, she's, you're such a unique person, Heather. And so I would say infuse that into what you're talking about on your podcast, on your Pinterest board and what it is that you do because the more niche and creative.

The more you're willing, you're going to be able to attract the very specific people that you want to reach.

[00:45:12] Shelley Carney: That's right. That's right. Speak your truth. That's right. That's right. People who agree with you will show up. They'll show up.

[00:45:22] Jen McFarland: That's right. Tweak of the week.

[00:45:24] Shelley Carney: Oh yeah. Let's talk a little, just for a second about descript.

We got into the script a little bit because they did put out they had a video when they said, oh, we're putting out all these new things. Come see it. So we went and we watched, and I learned how to do some new things with our audio grams, which have pinned. Going audiogram crazy this week with JavaScript to promote our, the the release of our new book, the women in podcasting book.

We wanted to make sure that, we do our due diligence to promote that book because of the people who gave their time and effort to collaborate and contribute to that. So we want to make sure that we, we share that, but in these

[00:46:01] Jen McFarland: scraps of wait, wait before. What's an audiogram for people who don't

[00:46:05] Shelley Carney: know.

Okay. So an audiogram is basically it's a square picture. And on that square picture, you'll put some of your the talking points that you want to share from your podcast or your live stream. You'll just put the words and it highlights the words. So it's great. And People can listen to it with sound and hear the person's voice, or they can just read it as they're going through their phone.

I try to keep mine around 50 seconds long. So they're not too long. And something that D script is offered for a little while now, but they're keep improving it as it goes along. Overdub where you can clone your voice basically, so that if you are using it for editing audio, for instance, and say I was trying to create an audio gram and I couldn't find the exact right things to go together.

And sometimes I had to go into other Other podcasts that I did with other people. Cause I knew I asked that question in that specific way in another one, but let me put it here because that's what this woman is talking about. So I wanted to set it up. So it made sense. But with overdub I could have just written in some of the words that I wanted to say to set up her answer correctly.

So I didn't have to continue, to look everywhere for, when did I say this? I could've just typed it in. Because I didn't own my voice. It would just sound like I said that, and then she gave a good answer. It's helping with that. And it's really a fun thing to play with.

[00:47:39] Jen McFarland: I love descript for his video for most of the people here is video.

So if you, I use it for that primarily because. I haven't been doing as much with like transcripts and all of that kind of thing, but I can generate like closed captioning, which I think is really cool for video. And then you can edit video by just editing the text underneath. I can edit the video for you.

So if you have videos and you're like, oh, but I'd really just want more control about how to like, take that stuff out. It's really great and it's really easy to do it that way, then you don't have to become like a really big video.

[00:48:16] Shelley Carney: And you can just grab clips and make a whole new file.

That's just your clips. And then you can edit just that.

[00:48:23] Jen McFarland: Julia asked about audio grams, so we covered that a minute ago, but what the script does there's also headliner, there's a few different things like that. You put up a picture. And it will place the text over the top of it while it plays the audio.

And it's really easy. It's really easy to do it. I think headliner's super easy. I think descript is really easy for that. And then the script is making it also good where you can just take your, they were isn't the change now that you can just upload like texts and make a. And make a audio gram out of that.

You can. Yeah. So it's gotten a lot easier and they're really fun. I think.

[00:49:06] Shelley Carney: Make an audio gram. It just does it like, okay. Download that. Okay, here I go. And if you want to find audiograms follow Jen and I on social media and you'll find us by our names and you'll see a lot of

[00:49:19] Jen McFarland: audio grams. Know, the problem is we're running. Two companies is I don't have as much time to dive into every single program and keep updated on it.

But apparently there's an audio gram button in descript now. And but it's a really easy way. It's really good for people to follow along, so many people don't have the volume up. On video on social, but if you have an audio gram and it's giving people the words, they can see what it's about.

And then if they're like, oh, this is really interesting, then they can unmute and get a good sense of it. I like it in descript because it highlights the words and it reminds me of when I was a kid and it was like singing along. Like I just love that kind of stuff. Yeah. I think that they're a good way for like engagement and really helpful in that regard.

And the script makes it very easy. Headliner, I think there's a few other ones too, but. Don't overwhelm yourself. So I'm researching everything. So what else have we got? I

[00:50:21] Shelley Carney: think we're at our inspirational moment. I want to share this. It's just, I was reading, I told you last week that I was reading through the, a stoic book and it's a daily journal basically.

And today was about. How do you deal with anxiety? And a lot of times, yeah. My schedule gets off delayed or interrupted. I get a little anxious and I found that it used to be when I would, was doing new to live streaming, I'd get very anxious about the start of the live stream and it had to start on time and everything had to be perfect.

And of course, yesterday, our guests showed up a couple minutes late and Toby's camera didn't work. And a lot of things went wrong and I just. Flowed with it because we've done this so many times, it doesn't bother me anymore, but there are still things that do bother me. So I'm trying to take that, that calmness and that, what it does in an hour and a half from now, it's not going to matter that we started two minutes late.

Nobody's going to care. What matters is in the moment, how did I react? How did I treat the people I was working with? Did I point fingers and say you were late and I'm bad at, I just flowed with it. This is life and it's all good. And so I try to take that into the rest of my life, wherever I feel, anxiety and my schedule is getting shaken up.

I try to remember that moment, it's all good. Just bring that.

[00:51:45] Jen McFarland: It's funny because I've really found that the thing I've been working on the most in this new year is setting up some systems, getting some accountability. I joined a group called fizzle and I really liked that group too.

And then I started using the calm app and I do like daily meditations. That it's almost a good way to just let go of whatever happened yesterday and getting restarted on the day. And it's. A wonderful way to really reduce anxiety, get, just turn the page. And I think it's really hard in these COVID times to do that.

We tend to keep keeping. Holding onto the stuff, because it's like everything it's like an every day is like the same day and it's different, like Groundhog day. And I think that anything that we can do, I love that, I think it's important for us to just show up and roll with it and keep on doing.

[00:52:42] Shelley Carney: My husband was watching Groundhog day yesterday. And it reminded me that the kind of the moral or the underlying truth of that story is nothing changes until you do. It's good to be reminded of that. Nothing changes until you do. And what can you change? What do you have control over your thoughts?

And what you do with those thoughts.

[00:53:08] Jen McFarland: I think that's it. I got to add to that I think are wonderful and I totally agree. So everybody out there, if you have questions, comments please subscribe and yeah. Send us your questions and yeah. Just stay mellow. Enjoy it.

[00:53:24] Shelley Carney: All right. And we'll see you next week.

That's right. Bye. For now.

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