Welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy. I am so happy that the word strategy is in my podcast title because it is also in the title of today's episode, which is a one on one, an overview of social media strategy. Starting from the beginning, especially if you're someone who's new, but even if you're not, I find that a lot of people don't really understand how to come up with a strategy for social media. So I think it's important to start the year off with with some basics just to give you some food for thought even if you've been content creating for a while. I think you're gonna have get have some takeaways from today.

Before I get started, the unsponsored buy shout out of the day is my Cuisinart bread machine. Hello. I am obsessed with it. It is something I never thought I needed. And I don't always like to have a lot of appliances, but you know what?

Sometimes you get an appliance and it's just right. So I like the idea of having of trying to eat more intentionally, especially for twenty twenty six, and do more, less processed food. Less sugar and less processed food is kind of a personal goal. And in doing that, preservatives are in everything. They're in everything you buy.

If you look, if you start really reading ingredients, it can really get rough on your brain. So even just looking at bread ingredients now, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's so many other ingredients besides, you know, flour and water and the things that go into making bread. So it was really, really frustrating. And so I decided, okay, now that I've got this bread machine, I am taking it on. And I bought sprouted grain flour, whole wheat flour, gluten free flour, got all the flours, doing all the little tests, and I am obsessed because you can make really fresh bread.

It tastes it smells great. It makes the house smell great the whole time it's baking for the couple of hours it's in there. And you can try so many different things. I did a honey spiced challah bread. I did a banana.

It's not really a banana flavored bread like the banana bread you know that's cake. More like banana but actual bread. And then another cinnamon one. I mean, I'm into it. And if you like to eat bread and you want to eat fresh bread, I say I say I give it a big thumbs up.

Okay. Wish I could bring it in here and show you, but let's get let's not get crazy. Alright. Let's talk about strategy. And a lot of the private sessions that I do, people don't even understand strategy.

They think and a lot of the audits I do in particular. The it's a really interesting thing to see when people will say, oh, can you look at my account? And then I go and look. And there's smaller creators that are giving tips for growth on social media. And I'm like, why are you sharing tips?

You haven't even grown your account yet to to be able to share tips. Well, they're just regurgitating what they think the audience wants. And I can think of people very specifically who thought, well, well, that's what people wanna know. They wanna know how to grow. And I'm like, yeah.

But they don't necessarily wanna know how to grow from you because you haven't grown yet. So why regurgitate things that you're not even sure work? So they and sometimes they're regurgitating things that very big creators have said that aren't even true, which is like, ah, don't do that. And they don't know, so they don't have the experience to know. So my my whole thing about that this, this whole point is not to just think, oh, people wanna hear this, so I'm gonna talk about that.

Well, maybe that's not for you to talk about. Maybe that's that not your area of expertise. And maybe you're really good at gardening, and you can grow vegetables from scratch. And I sure can't. So you'd I'd wanna know that from someone who's an expert at that.

I don't necessarily wanna hear from somebody who's a gardening expert how they're gonna grow on social media when they don't have experience doing that. So okay. So I'm saying so a lot, but the point is that if you're posting and you have a goal, the goal should not be to regurgitate someone else's content to grow a following because then these people are looking to you for your expertise in that area, and you clearly don't have any because you're just stating things that you heard on other videos. Alright. So let's figure out, let's step back, go backwards, and figure out why.

Why are you posting on social media? If your goal is to make money, to sell products, you're gonna have a harder time growing because no one really wants to follow a commercial. We don't turn on the TV and go, let's play 10 commercials in a row. We're no, we're speeding through them usually. So you're not gonna find an audience that's really like, oh, I'm really interested in following this person.

Because if you think about all the big creators who are influencing and selling products, they have built a loyal loyal fan base before they ever got to that point. They had to get to a point of having loyal people listening to their mundane boring parts of their day or their morning routine or their experience with their kids for the mom influencers. They're doing other things to build an audience. And if you think about it, it's so basic in a way that you can't skip that part. If you want to be, if your goal is let's say to be an influencer or sell products, that's fine, but you're not going to start there.

You have to get there. You have to progress to there. You have to create a loyal following. People who are interested in your, whether it's your lifestyle, your family, your kids, your job, your experience in the kitchen, your, you know, your declutterer, whatever the heck you do. Whatever your thing is, you gotta bring your expertise to the table and figure out what your audience wants to know.

There is obviously an opportunity for people who just wanna have fun. They just wanna post on social media and dance and be crazy and be, you know, I'm, like, free to be me. Abso friggin' lutely you can do that. And even a strategy. Hate to say it, but it's just, it's a strategy if you're going to be intentional about it.

If you're just willy nilly randomly posting and you really don't know what you want to talk about or you know what your focus is, you're going to have a hard time growing because you're not going to have a vision for where you're headed. You almost need a social media vision board. Dare I say it? But I love a vision board now that I made one. Okay.

So you've got to figure out. So that's your first thing. Figure out why. Why are you coming to the table? And your why could change through time.

I have to refer to my own account because it's a good example. I started off making baking. I started off dancing, making dancing videos in the pandemic. And then I'm like, make some baking videos. Oh, make some household tips.

Oh, I'll splay some pledge on my refrigerator. And I had a viral video. I went from thing to thing to thing. And it wasn't until someone said, oh, how did you do that effect? I was like, I'll make it I'll make a tutorial.

So I didn't start where I am now. I started in an evolution to get where I am now. And so your evolution is starting now. That doesn't mean you're starting at the end. You're starting at the beginning.

It is the beginning. You have to find your way. Even if you have a few thousand followers and you think, oh, I have followers. Like, I have growth. That is the beginning still.

You're still finding your way. If you don't have a clear vision for what you're posting for, you're still you're still in in the transition mode, the evolution. Like we're all in it. We're always all in a transition by the way. We're never like landed.

I I have to say it because even no matter how big you grow on social media or how profitable you become on social media, you're in constant growth mode. Because if you're not, like, I don't know, that's boring, right? So we're always trying to evolve, be better, have more fun, do something different. I think that's part of life and you will just be like, are you even alive if you're not growing, changing, curious and evolving? I don't know.

I beg to ask the question to you. Alright, so you want to figure out aside from what your why is because you've got to get that down, and if you're not sure, if you're not sure, look at me Jersey girl, if you're not sure, you can start posting different things and experimenting. You try a few lanes, decide, oh, I'm gonna post a little bit about my travel, I'm gonna post a little bit about my job, I'm gonna post a little bit about what I love to do at the gym. And then you're gonna see what do my audience like? Which one are they, which one's getting more views?

And then you're gonna lean a little more that way this way. So you've gotta do this little navigating. But you've also gotta figure out what's fun for you to create. Because doing something that's fun, which I talked about last week, doing something you like is something you're more likely going to do consistently. So you've got to keep that in mind.

Figure out what's fun, what's easy, what feels too time intensive and exhausting is not gonna be the thing you're gonna stick with. So you've gotta really decide, okay, vlogs are too challenging, that's not for me. But posting a photo carousel is easy, so I'll do that twice a week. And then, oh, I love to do a quick, when I'm out for my walk or I'm walking the dog, I want to do a quick like thought of the day, you know, about something. Just remember that anything you're sharing needs to be more for your audience and not just a dump of your life because after a while no one's really going to be interested in that.

They it has to be why your viewer wants to be involved in your life. Not just here's my life, follow me because you're going to love what I do. No. It's what's the connection to me that I have with you that would make me even want to follow you. So think about the women who share some personal stories and then you become invested in that story, that's a reason.

But usually it's something relatable that they're sharing so then everybody's really interested in it. If it's an experience you have, you love to, you're a foodie and you love to go to restaurants. Instead of, I went to this great restaurant and I had this delicious meal. It's like, if you really love tortellini, I have got the pasta restaurant for you or I've got the recipe for you. Let's say you're a cook in the chef type videos.

Okay, so you want to frame your content, how it's fun for you, but how it's going to include your listener. That's what you want to do. Okay? You also want to make sure that you engage them. So if people are commenting, you're commenting back.

You wanna it's not like a one way street. Like, you just put it out there and, oh, I'm so popular. They're gonna, you know, drop comments. And a lot of people get they go the opposite way. They think they have to answer every comment when they have a viral video.

So there's a balance. If you can answer all the comments on a non viral video, I used to power out the comment responses because I was like people took time to leave a comment. I'm gonna take time to leave a comment back. And that is very important for anybody that I know in social media that has grown. It is a very big two way street of engagement.

They do not think their followers are their fans. They think their followers are friends. The people who are watching their videos are are friends. Like I don't know. I can think of several influencer friends who feel that way.

And several of them, that's how I met them. Because I made some comment and then they commented back and we got into a little dialogue and then we became friends. Hi Lorraine. Truly, that's how it happens. It's it's social media.

Social socializing. Right? Okay. Now, here's the thing that you're not going to want to hear because 2020 growth was amazing. And I will be honest with myself and say, listen, if I was starting now on social media, I would never have the express type of growth I had back in 2020 because people were home, bored, sitting on their phones all day, follow, follow, follow, follow.

Like, learn this, learn that, listen. You know, people don't have the time for that anymore as much as they did in the pandemic. We were really sequestered. We were seated. We were we we had a very captive audience when so if you were lucky enough to be on in that time, growth was phenomenal and very easily phenomenal.

But it's not 2020 anymore. We're not in Kansas anymore. However you wanna say it. So the days of people going viral and amassing thousands at once is not as common. It still happens.

But it's more of a needle in a haystack, drop in a bucket thing, like lottery versus pretty easy to do back in 2020. And that's throwing myself in the mix because I truly believe if I just came on here and started making tutorials or doing videos now, I don't know, would I be where I am? I'd like to think so. I like to think yes, but I also am a realist and I know that it's a different climate. And so maybe not.

Okay? But I'm glad I did it then because now I can help you. Alright. Now also with that in mind, it's better to get a few followers a week a lot of times versus five followers in a day anyway. Because usually those fly by night followers like that one video, maybe they follow, but then maybe they don't really engage after that.

So, you know, it is nice to have loyal. It's like having loyal listeners on a radio show. Having loyal followers tend to check-in with you more and they tend to look for your content. And when they engage with your content, they get more of your content. So it is better to have people who really like it versus a bunch of people who randomly followed you for one viral video because you did one crazy thing and then they don't watch your other videos.

That is a very important thing to understand because slow and steady growth is not to be dismissed. One could say I got to a million followers, let's say quickly. I'm not going to say quickly because it was a couple of years, okay? But since then it has been very slow growth for me. And I am not even worried about it.

I'm happy to show up for the people who are there. I'm happy when I do get a viral video and then I get a boatload of new followers and that's fun. But it's just, it's not why I show up. Truly. From my heart and soul.

It's not. I don't know. I'm searching my soul to make sure I'm being truthful with you. But it's not I never think oh I'm going have another viral video and I'm going to have get to 2,000,000. Like I think 2,000,000 is so elusive.

Don't think that's even a it's a pipe dream. But I could laugh about it and say oh yeah when I hit 2,000,000. But it's like not important I guess. I don't think about it much. I thought about it now because I wanted to really be honest, but it's not something that's on my radar.

I don't think about it. I think about helping the people that are already in my space, that are there to learn. I take more time answering the comments. I definitely take way more time in the studio and making sure everybody is served and getting what they need there. Because that's most important to me because those people have committed to me.

They've committed to me by subscription and that is where my first loyalty lies. And then I do try and help people in the in my comment section often. So a lot of times I make videos when I see something somebody asks something, and I'm like, that's a cool trend. Yeah. That was a good question.

I'll make that one. Excuse me. Cue the John Ham trend, which ended up popping off. Thanks to one or was more than one. I think three people asked for that video in one day, and and they were just three TikTok followers.

I don't even know where they came from, and I don't know who they are now. But three people asked, and I was like, I'll try it. Yeah. It seems like an easy one. Why would they need a tutorial?

But okay. And then cue that what happened and cue that I managed to get all those emails from on my email list due to the clip being avail making the clip available. So I really turned that into an opportunity that I never saw coming, because I didn't think the tutorial was gonna get that much attention. I mean, yeah. But we I talked about that already.

So on we go if you listened last week. Alright. The next thing is to think about authenticity being not just a hot trend on social media, but a reality. Because it's not going away. Okay?

It's not, you may think, okay, the next trend is going to be episodic or the next trend is going be storytelling or the next trend. In that big scheme of things, people don't want fake. Even when people find out in the comments that something was AI, you could see the annoyance. Oh my god. I'm such I'm so gullible.

So even though I know we have AI problems coming, coming down the pike fast, but a lot of people get annoyed when they find out something was AI. So the more you can be real and share that realness in a way that's going to connect with people, you're going to be better off. Because in this world of fakeness I think more and more people are looking for real life connections. And I speak from a personal experience where I was at dinner with a group of people and one of them was talking about even just dating apps and not wanting to be on dating apps because it's so frustrating because all you get to see is one photo and it's like you might have had a connection with that person if you got to talk to them in real life, you know. So, you know using that as an example, we do want to really believe and feel the person that's on that other side of the phone is the real deal.

Know we put our stock in it. People get so annoyed when they find out one of their favorite influencers is you, you, you or believes this and that and they never understood that about that person. It's like I the more truthful you can be and the more yourself you can be, you're gonna find the people that are meant to follow you. Alright? So that's it.

Keep it real. Don't fake it. Don't try and be the same as the next person. Don't look to somebody who's in your same business. I do private sessions a lot and you know some of the biggest truths I learned in those sessions is how much people compare themselves and they're like oh there's this other person, they're in the same business and they're doing so much better than me and I get like the jealousy or the envy and I'm like, I get the impostor syndrome that I'm not good enough and I'm like, oh my gosh.

I don't even look at other people who do tutorials because I just think there's hundreds of them probably. I don't even know. And I just enjoy teaching and my followers enjoy my style of teaching. And even if they learn from other people too, I'm okay with that. Whatever works and however I can bring my secret sauce or special sauce to it, I think that's what makes the continuation of the loyalty from the people that are following you.

If they know that you're being truthful. I think that's such a big part of it. So the big thing is, at the end of the day, is that if you do these things, come up with a plan, make a strategy, you will not have to be discouraged by views because you'll be doing it from a place of energy and passion of what you want to do. Alright, so before I wrap it up, I just want to I want to give you a little bit of an outline. So as I do when I have private sessions, I will find out what is this person looking to do, what's their goal on social media, And sometimes it's a business, a person doing a business, sometimes it's somebody that wants to just gain like Gen X following of women so that they can eventually promote products.

And someone else might have a thing where they're really good at organizing, so they're going to share lots of organizing tips, but they're not really ready to monetize or turn that into a business. So instead they're just sharing openly like how I was sharing the tutorials before I ever decided to turn it into a teaching platform. So you may not have like the, you may have the end goal far away in your mind, but you don't have to be at the end goal. You can get yourself there. So no matter what your area of focus is, you'll always want to think about a few types of videos that you are posting on a rotation so that whoever comes to your page, if they followed you for one type of video, they don't have to scroll too deep to get to another one of those types of videos.

And I did this an example for one of my studio members where I was like, okay, this woman has this lifestyle. So I'm like, now that's so interesting. So you'll have you'll want a whole series of your content to be vlogs where you show the two different lifestyles. Another series might be trends where you refer to the fact that you have two lifestyles. And another one might be just you speaking on camera about something unique about one or the other of those lifestyles.

So now that's three examples of a type of content a creator could do who isn't even looking to sell anything right away. They're just looking to create an audience and find their way on social media. So that's an example. You would pick and you'd rotate between three types of content that you really enjoy doing, whether it's lip sync trends or just silly just silly trends with text on it. Whatever the thing is you wanna rotate, usually a trend is helpful to have in there in the rotation because trends get pushed out more.

So it's like your vlog content, your a trend, and maybe some speaking content, and then you rotate. Now if you're a business, you would go maybe a different route. You'd say, okay, so I just met with someone who has a business, a local business in New York City. And I'm like, okay, so you want to have your content be educational. You want to educate about that business.

This way you're not selling anything, you're telling people, did you know that instead of doing this type of hair removal, you could do this type of hair removal? Explain what the difference is. And that is educational. So as a business owner, your best bet is to educate about the business without selling anything. Because if you become the expert about your business, you will automatically end up being the one that people trust.

So I would recommend to businesses to have educational content, inspirational content, trend content, behind the scenes content. I mean, that's right off the top of my head. Four types of content that you would share as a business owner so that you can curate an audience that doesn't feel like they're gonna be sold to every day. It has to be more a feeling that you're creating. So that way you create the expertise around yourself so that when someone does want to buy the thing or do the thing or have a consult with the person or whatever, you become trusted person.

Okay? So you've got to think in terms of content rotation. So from the top, you've got to think in terms of what's your why, what do you like doing, figure out what's fun to create, know that you're gonna take your time doing it, but also have a plan so that you know we're gonna rotate these types of content so that you can put a little bit, put blinders on. And so everything you see when you scroll is not something you need to create. You don't have to copy every video you've seen.

You don't have to look at every video from a similar type of creator and do that too. You can be your own person. A lot of times blinders are really helpful in social media because those are the times where you come up with your true your true self videos. At least that's how it works for me. I'm gonna leave you with that.

Have a great week. I'm gonna go make some bread and I'll see you next Friday.