Do you ever look at someone's business and just wonder what it looks like behind the scenes? I do all the time. And I'm super nosey–I want to know their processes, shortcuts, hacks and what online tools they use. I literally hate spinning my wheels so I try to avoid it.
I want to help you avoid it too by answering one of the big questions I get asked about all the time.
How do I manage to get my blog and social media so that it happens consistently?
Let me tell you, what I'm about to tell you took me years to figure out and will hopefully help you go from zero to consistency a whole lot faster than it took me.
And by the way, this can also apply to podcasts, youtube videos, Facebook lives, whatever it is that you love doing to share your goods with your people.
So I'm going to share three secrets and then the seven online tools to make it happen…
Secret 1: Brainstorming
Brainstorming has been super, super helpful in helping me to stay consistent. I keep a running Google document of all of the ideas I think about based on what you all ask about or what somebody else has done that I can put my own spin on. So when it is time to sit down for the next step of creating my blog or social content, I have a bank of ideas and don't need to sit staring at the computer for hours like I used to do trying to come up with inspiration.
Secret 2: Batching and Automations
Batching is seriously my new best friend. I want to sit on the floor and paint my toenails with batching because I love it so much. I used to write my blog each week. As you can imagine, work and life gets busy and the weeks would fly by with no time to do anything but the most urgent items on my schedule.
Result: blog didn't get done and then I lost momentum.
Now, what I do is schedule days each quarter to create my multiple blog posts and the 2-3 social media posts that go with each blog. At this moment, this is the third blog post that I am writing today. This is a beautiful thing because it doesn't mean sitting down on a weekly basis to create anymore.
I do get a breather.
Which I don't want you to take the wrong way.
I love you but it is nice to not have to always be in creation mode.
Secret 3: Leveraging
This is how you can really max what you are doing on social media. We take just about every social media post and story and spread it across as many platforms as possible. We put each post in multiple places and formats so that we don't need to be in constant creation for those either. Treat yo' self and leverage your content.
Ok, so once those blogs are created, we use a few tools behind the scenes to make sure that they actually go out on the days that we want them to.
The Online Tools
WordPress: Wordress is where I write my blog. It is where I have my website built too. It's super easy to use and just about every online guru will tell you that WordPress is where it's at to have your website.
Aweber: This is the service that sends the weekly email with the link to the blog. We are able to create all of our emails at one time and schedule the exact day and time that they go out. It is also my customer management software and it has been with me since the beginning of my business. Love it!
Google Drive: This is where we house our super, top-secret RHI docs. It is also where I have a template that we use each week to capture all of the information for these weekly emails (image, links, note, etc). I write our Instagram posts for the blog (including hashtags) and add the image that I want to have pinned on Pinterest here too. This gets sent to my amazing, stupendous assistant, Catherine, and she puts all of it together for you and our social media fam.
Asana: This is our project management software and it is where I let Catherine know that everything is ready for her to schedule and post for us. It is also where our team manages just about every task and project in my business. I joke that I sneak around behind my husband's back with Asana because I find myself constantly finding ways to do more with it.
Recurpost: Oh my friend. Game. Changing. This delicious tool lets you set up libraries of social media content, will choose the best time to push it out to your social media channels and then repurpose your content when you run out. Oh. ma. lord. Do I love this thing! It is truly a set it and forget it kind of sitch which is amazing!
Canva: I've written about Canva before here and I know I sound like a broken record but it is worth saying again. I apologize for the addiction that this is about to create. Canva is where Catherine and I make all of our images for social media like the one below. It is so fun to work with and you can create just about any marketing material you need there. Go check it out…it's so fun!
Ripl: Another one of our faves that I wrote about here. Ripl is where we create short videos to promote our listings and our Realtor partners like the one below. They are so fun and break up the monotony in the Facebook feed. But are also great to pop into FB and Instagram stories.
If you follow the secrets and use these online tools, you'll be amazed by your bad self! If you want to learn even more behind the scenes of how I am growing my business–and how you can too–I'll be opening enrollment to my new mentorship program RethinkYou soon! You can pop on the waitlist below!
xo,
Lori
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