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Marketing Advice NOT To Take
There is a LOT of marketing advice out there. Some of it is truly incredible. Some of it is incredible for the right people at the right time. And some of it? Is a terrible hunk of garbage.
Today, I wanted to talk about 7 of the worst pieces of content advice that I’ve heard over the last 7 years of being in business. And yes, if you’ve listened to episode 071 this is a refresh of that episode. But it is newly recorded and not exactly the same, so I recommend sticking around anyways.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/
- This week’s action step: Take a look at all of your current marketing activities and get intentional about choosing just one or two to focus on.
- This week’s book recommendation: Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.
Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!
Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
There is a lot of marketing advice out there. Some of it is truly incredible. Some of it is incredible for the right people at the right time. And some of it is, well, a terrible hunk of garbage. And today I wanted to talk about seven of the worst pieces of content advice that I’ve heard over the last seven years of being in business.
And yes, if you’ve listened to episode 71, this is a refresh of that episode, but it is a newly recorded and not exactly the same refresh of that episode. So I recommend sticking around anyways, you’re listening to episode 221 of the chasing simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, chasing simple marketing.
And you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.
How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?
Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing, welcome friend, this is chasing simple where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.
I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.
When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as the Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.
If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.
Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices and meet me here each week for love support. Practical tips and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together. Shall we want even more help? Simplifying your marketing and business love the chasing simple podcasts.
If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4 p. m. Pacific time, 7 p. m. Eastern time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.
Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.
I hope to see you Monday! So today I want to share some of the absolute worst advice that I have heard as a content marketing strategist. Now some of this is stuff that I heard and I believed when I first started my business. When I first started my business, I actually had no idea how to market my business, or so I thought.
I felt like I didn’t understand marketing. It didn’t make sense to me. I really struggled to, to grasp how to use it effectively, which I think is what makes me a great marketing strategist actually is because I don’t have that, that background training. I truly had to dig deep and figure out what works and what doesn’t.
And a lot of this advice is stuff that I did believe because I saw other people doing it. I saw other people talking about it. I believed what’s helpful. And so some of this. Um, and I’m going to be talking about some of the worst pieces of advice that I see. harmful advice in some ways. Some of this is just not really, it’s not harmful, but it’s not really helpful either and it’s kind of a waste of your time.
And so I just want to talk about some of the worst pieces of advice that I see. So one of the first pieces of advice I want to share that’s just not helpful. Again, not harmful, but just kind of a waste of your time and harmful in and of the fact that it is It’s a harmful mindset. I guess it doesn’t harm your business, but it’s a harmful mindset Which i’ll get to is the idea that you need to engage for the first 15 minutes after you put out a post and the belief that the algorithm is going to push your content better if you’re engaging, uh, within the first 15 minutes.
And I think if you are someone who has a massive audience and You immediately are getting comments on that specific post as soon as you’re putting it out. Maybe. It does help the algorithm some. Most of us are not going to have thousands and thousands and thousands of followers, right? We’re not going to have these massive 28, 45, 000 followers where we’re getting comments immediately and we need to sit there and comment as soon as it comes in.
Because if you’re just engaging on your profile, it’s probably not going to help that much. But two, even if you’re someone who has these massive amounts of followers and isn’t engaging right away, in theory, it could push it better for you. But in practice, those 15 minutes Aren’t really just 15 minutes because you have to take the time to either either you’ve scheduled your content out Which I hope you have but maybe you didn’t and even if you did schedule it out You have to stop what you’re doing at a specific time to put the post up Get it up and then stick around for 15 minutes scheduling it and for those of us that have some time blindness, maybe, um, that that could be really, really time consuming because it’s not just the 20 minutes or so where you’re putting the post up and engaging and making sure you’re interacting.
It’s the 10 minutes I need to make sure I don’t miss it. I want to make sure I’m on time. Let me maybe I’ll just scroll for a little bit. Right? And then that’s assuming you don’t get caught up in scrolling after you’re done engaging. It can become such a time consuming thing. And then you have to really ask yourself, is this 15 minutes, 30 minutes, however long that I’m spending each and every day engaging, is it truly moving the needle in my marketing?
Or could I spend that two hours a week doing something else to truly move the needle? Maybe instead you’re spending two hours a week pitching yourself to be on podcasts. Which of those is going to do more to grow your audience and move the needle? It’s definitely going to be being a guest on a podcast.
And so it’s not necessarily, it’s not going to harm your business to spend the first 15 minutes engaging, but it’s also not necessarily helping your business all that much. And there’s so much more you can do with your marketing time. Because again, we want to spend the least amount of time marketing and make the largest impact in those 15 minutes.
Two hours a week, however it ends up adding up, that you’re spending just Engaging right after you post just to push the algorithm a little bit more. You could spend that doing so many more things that are actually more helpful for your marketing and for your business. So that’s the first one, this whole idea that oh, I have to Engage right after I post.
It’s just not, it’s not worth it. The next one also has to do with the algorithm. The second worst piece of advice, and actually this one for some reason frustrates me most. And it’s again, not that it’s necessarily actually, no, this one is harmful to your business. We’ll just, we’ll just put that out there.
This one, I have a little bit of a soapbox for, so hang on tight. It’s the idea that the algorithm is going to punish you for scheduling out your content. It’s just not true It’s not true. Okay, so the idea that you have to schedule out your content in order to Or that you can’t because you’ll be punished by the algorithm It’s garbage.
First and foremost, uh, even if it was true, and similar to the last point, it’s not worth your time. It’s not worth your time to sit there and every single day stop what you’re doing in order to schedule out a piece of content. Especially on social media, where our reach is so low, our engagement is so low.
Instagram right now, engagement is just tanked. And that’s because they want you to pay, right? Like, they, they’ve rolled out these tiers where you have to pay X amount to get Engagement is tanked because they want you to pay. Period. Period. And so, worrying about if it was true, it’s not true, but if it was true that you would get docked by the algorithm for scheduling out your content.
The time you save in the long run and the mental capacity you end up with from scheduling out your content is so worth that dock. Again, it’s not real, but if it was, it’s so worth it because you gain so much more from not sitting there and having to put out your content yourself and instead being able to sit down and schedule it all out.
But, here’s the other thing, Facebook, which owns Instagram, it has a native scheduling tool. They, meaning Facebook, Meta, whatever they want to be called at this point, they did not put All of the manpower, the time, the energy, the money into creating a scheduling tool that they would then in effect punish you for using.
So the fact that they have a native scheduling tool in and of itself just shows us that that’s not true. The algorithm doesn’t dock you for using a scheduling tool. And. Even if it did, it’s really not worth your time to worry about. One of my biggest pet peeves in the marketing sphere is people who train other entrepreneurs to fear the algorithm.
And. To try to please the algorithm, because we’re never gonna please the algorithm. It just, we will not do it, because what the algorithm, what the algorithm wants is for you to pay. And if you’ve done Facebook ads or anything like that, you know that even then, it’s hard to know how to please the algorithm.
They don’t want you to figure it out, right? Because they want you to continue to give them money. So anyways, that’s a bit of a soapbox, but Worrying about the algorithm in general, especially with a scheduling tool, one of the worst pieces of content advice that I have ever heard. It’s just not worth your time.
It’s not worth the effort. And it’s so much better for you to just spend that time and energy doing other marketing things for your business. Now the third piece of just terrible marketing advice that I’m honestly, I’m not sure if there’s still a thing. Um, again, this is one that I can remember very vividly it being a thing for a long time around like 2019, early 2020.
And I’m not sure if I just don’t hang out the spaces where they’re talked about anymore or if they’re truly not a thing anymore. So if this is something that you see, Things like using bots to boost your engagement or boost your, your followers. And by bots, I don’t mean there are some native like AI technologies, which we can call bots that can help.
Increase your engagement so that you’re, I don’t love autoresponders, but you can set things like that up for your social media. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about, and again, these may not exist anymore, but in case they do, and in case they’re still being pushed, the bots where it would be like, you would set it up so that it would comment, you know, you could give it X, Y, Z things, the comment, and it would go find other profiles.
To comment on their stuff in the hopes that they would then go look at your profile and follow you. But the problem was is that you’re having to comment such generic things in order to make these work. That most people probably aren’t going to go look at your profile anyways, because it’s not not doing anything for them.
Right? Like, we’ve gotten to the point where we’re almost desensitized to these, like, really generic comments and we can go, Oh, that’s a bot, right? But along with bots, and again, like, mini chat, you could call a bot. It’s different because you’re not going out and using it to find new followers. You’re using it to connect easier with your followers.
If that makes sense. So like bots or those follow for follow loops, where it’s this whole train of people who are like, all right, go follow all of these people and all these people will follow you. And all you’re doing is increasing your audience size or follow, unfollow that whole thing. That was a really big where you go and you follow a bunch of people.
And as soon as they follow you back, you unfollow them and you just hope that they don’t notice that you’re not following them. And people would do that to make it seem like. They had these big audiences and they weren’t following a lot of people. It was like a authority builder almost, but then when it’s not real, it’s not true authority.
And here’s the thing, all of these, the idea behind them, the premise behind them, the goal behind them is to grow your numbers versus focusing on growing your true audience. And A small but engaged audience is a million times better than having a massive following that isn’t engaged with you. Because at the end of the day, why do you want an audience?
You want an audience so that you can sell to people. Random people that follow you are not going to go, oh yeah, let me buy this thing that they’re launching, uh, because it showed up on my feed when they were talking about it. No, you’re only going to buy someone if you know, like, and trust them. And so for these people to actually buy from you.
They have to build a relationship with you and when you’re doing things like bots and follows for follows and the follow one follow thing, anything that is intended to just grow your, your numbers and not necessarily your audience and your relationships. It’s a terrible piece of advice because it’s not growing your bottom line and once again, you’re wasting time that could be better spent in other marketing areas.
A similar idea to that, the next just terrible piece of content advice number four that’s out there is the idea that you need to create a list of 10, 15, 20, however many people a day and reach out to those many new people each day on social media. That’s a terrible piece of advice, let’s be quite honest.
In a similar vein as the last point, uh, it’s simply just trying to grow your numbers without really trying to grow your audience. And you could argue, but if you’re reaching out to them, then it’s different because you’re actually trying to connect with them. And yes and no. So yes, it is different because in this case, you’re truly doing the research to find people that you want to reach out to.
And you’re trying to start an actual conversation with them. But no, because The goal is still the same. It’s still, how do I grow my network? How do I grow my audience and not, how do I connect with this person that I really want to connect with? And there’s such a difference there. And. The intent truly does shine through and it does make all the difference in the world.
And that’s not to say people that do this can’t be successful with it. But when we’re trying to simply copy someone else doing this because, Oh, I, you know, grew my revenue by XML because I got these new clients because I was doing reach outs. Trying to simply copy that method versus let me actually reach out to people that I really want to discuss and talk with and have questions for and love what they’re doing.
Those are two very different things. This is one of the pieces of advice that like a small tweak I feel like makes all the difference. If you have a list of people that you’re like, I truly want to connect with these people. And maybe once a day you’re making it your mission to actually go and connect with them and comment on their stuff and share their things and just be a cheerleader for them.
That’s totally different. Um, this piece of advice that I’m talking about here is strictly when you’re just simply trying to, I got to find 20 people to interact with today. Let me just search Instagram until I can find 20 different people, you know, there, there is a difference there. And that intent again, means everything.
So the Next, just awful piece of content advice, content marketing advice is getting rid of unengaged followers. Now, when this comes to your email list, I am 100 percent on board and I think you should do this regularly. I go through every single month and I remove unengaged people on my email list, people that aren’t opening my stuff, that aren’t interested in what I’m emailing them, that aren’t paying attention to the emails, that, you know, have.
Unsubscribed. I’m removing cold leads constantly from my email list every single month. That is something you should do for your email list because eventually you get to a point where the bigger your email list is the more you have to pay per month for a lot of these email providers and so you are sending Emails to people that are cold leads, that haven’t, that haven’t opened your emails in months, aren’t gonna open your emails probably, aren’t interested in what you’re sending them, and yet you’re essentially paying to send them these emails.
You want to clean those out. I don’t think, and this is one of those, Piece of advice that it’s honestly not terrible advice. I just personally think as someone whose focus is Simplicity and time management as far as it goes with marketing. I don’t think it’s worth your time to do So a lot of people will say oh I go in and I clean out my unengaged followers for my instagram following And it helps with my engagement on instagram.
And again, it probably does It’s not that that doesn’t work. It probably does help because You Again, a smaller, more engaged audience is going to do a lot more for you than a larger, unengaged audience. But, the amount of time it takes to go through and figure out who’s engaged and who isn’t is really, really time consuming for Instagram versus like your email list.
At least with Kartra, which is what I use, you can really simply go in and go, who hasn’t opened an email in the last three months? Okay, delete. And it’s really quick and simple. I go through and clean out my email list in less than 30 minutes every single month, right? But for Instagram, you’re having to go through and physically remove each and every single individual person, and if you have a lot of people on your list, that’s really, really time consuming.
And so once again, it goes back to the idea of Will it benefit your business? Probably. Will it benefit it enough to be worth the time that it’s going to take you to do it? It’s not going to. And so, that’s one of those where it’s like, You could do it. It could help with your engagement on Instagram. It’s probably not worth it.
That hour or more that you’re going to spend, however often, removing unengaged followers, you could spend it doing so many other things. That’s a whole guest podcast interview you could record where you’re getting in front of a brand new audience. That is however many five maybe podcast pitches that you could send.
That’s whatever it is that you’re doing a whole blog post that you wrote for guest blogging for someone’s blog, right? So it’s, it’s one of those, is it worth it? Is it worth what I could be doing? Because let’s face it, there’s never enough time to do everything. So how do you determine what the best things are for you to spend your time doing marketing wise?
So that is, I believe that was number five, uh, for some of the worst pieces of content marketing advice that I’ve heard as a content marketing strategist. The next one, number six, is that social media is the only type of marketing that you need. I have found it so interesting in the last year or two to see people who, their entire business was focused around a specific piece of social media content, have now started teaching about other types of marketing that have nothing to do with social media.
And that’s not an issue to anyone. Our businesses are always going to grow and evolve as they should, and I know plenty of people who started off, I mean, my business has grown and evolved where I started with this focus, and then this focus, and then this focus. That’s normal and natural for you to go, oh, well, this is the thing I’m really loving right now, and as that becomes no longer necessary, maybe you move into other things.
But it is just a super interesting trend right now, where we are all really sick and tired of social media in so many different ways. But there are still some people who, because it’s what they teach, uh, they are very focused on do XYZ and get these results from social media and it’s gonna expand your business.
Social media cannot be. Your only type of content and it cannot be your main type of content either, which is another thing I don’t think I don’t know if I ever really see anyone say this is the only type of content you should be putting out Sometimes rarely I have seen it a couple times, but for the most part It’s just someone gets so heavily focused on one type of content that they they kind of lose the force for the trees Right, and so they get stuck with Oh social media social media social media And because that’s all they’re seeing is they’re following all these people talking about social media that they end up feeling like that’s all they really need to focus on, or even what they need to spend more time focusing on, when in reality, your social media should kind of be your, your last resort.
Bit of effort when it comes to your marketing, your highest focus should be on your long form content. So whether that’s a blog, YouTube podcast, whatever your biggest focus, your, the time you most spend, the attention you give most to should be your long form content. And then you can take that long form content and repurpose it into your email newsletters and your social media content.
And then that way. You have this, this plethora of content because, you know, long form content gives you this much space to teach someone, and social media gives you this much space, right? You’ve got this plethora of content that you can send people back to, but you also have more time and ability to build that know, like, and trust factor, right?
To be realistic here right now, if you listen to my podcast, that is going to grow your relationship with me way more than just seeing a post on my Instagram feed. Now with doing YouTube, you’ve got my voice and my face and my weird mannerisms and the way I talk with my hands and all of the things, right?
That helps you get to know me a lot faster and a lot better than just a social media post. And so it’s important that social media is not your main focus. And Some people push it probably a little bit more than they should, uh, when they’re teaching other entrepreneurs how to market their business.
Again, we want to make sure my whole focus is to help you simplify your marketing so that you have the biggest impact in the least amount of time. And if you want to do that, social media should not be your focus. And then the final piece that I want to share today, number seven, of just terrible pieces of content marketing advice that I’ve heard is that any content is better than no content.
And this is another one that is a yes and no, because if we’re talking about, and we’re talking to someone who is a perfectionist, who continues to avoid putting content out there. Because they’re being a perfectionist, because they just don’t feel ready, because they are scared or fearful or whatever it may be that’s holding them back from putting content out there, yes.
Any content is better than no content. I have students, I have members in my membership, I have clients even. Stuff come to me and said I want to put content out help me out. I want to start a podcast I want to do X. I want to do why I want to do Z But I’m scared in that case get started get over that fear because once you start doing it It’s gonna feel so much easier any content is better than no content in that context 100 percent however If you are putting content out and it’s, it’s not a perfectionist struggle, any content is not better than no content.
I would rather see you take a step back for a bit, slow down, create a strategy, create quality content, and put less content out moving forward than simply putting content out for the sake of putting content out. You don’t have to be in this. I think often comes from this idea that we need to show up constantly, right?
We think that the more we show up, the better it’s going to be for our business. And that’s just not the case. As long as we’re consistent, those two constant and consistent, not the same thing, right? As long as we’re consistent, putting out quality content less often is going to be so much better for your business and so much better for your audience than constantly putting out mediocre content.
So, if you’re someone who is struggling to get your content out because you’re being a perfectionist, this is, this one’s not for you. You put that content out, any content is better than no content. If you are someone who is trying to constantly show up, who is trying to just put out as much content as they can, put a pause on your content.
Take a step back. Do a batch week, slow down, create strategic content, create quality content, schedule it out, and then moving forward, put out less content that’s better at a less, a lower frequency. So, those were the, the seven different awful pieces of advice I’ve heard as a content strategist. Any content is better than no content.
Social media should be your main focus or you should be spending the majority of your time working on your social media content. Getting rid of unengaged followers from social media specifically. Reaching out to X number of people per day. Any of the bots, the follow for follow loops, the follow unfollow game, those number games, where it’s just all about making sure that you’re just, you know, Just checking a box, really, instead of truly trying to connect with people.
Just having that list of people to check off and say, hey, XYZ, there you go. And then basically anything to do with the algorithm. If you’re worrying about the algorithm, you’re not worrying about the right thing with your marketing. And so any, that final, just, that’s it. Awful piece of advice is to worry about the algorithm.
Don’t worry about the algorithm. It’s not your friend. It’s not for you and it’s not worth your time. So if anything you’re doing, if you have any practices that you’re doing that are taking up time and mental space in your business that have to do with trying to police the algorithm, you can go ahead and just The wrong way.
Work them up, burn them. It’s done. We’re not going to worry about the algorithm anymore around here. Your action step for this week is to take a look at all of your current marketing activities and then get intentional about choosing just one or two to focus on. It’s really easy to take a look at all of the marketing advice out there and try to implement all of it.
But we want to make sure that what we’re actually doing is Taking in the marketing advice that’s out there and being really intentional about what’s going to work best for us right now. And if you need help figuring that out, if you go to amandawarfield. com slash quiz, I’ve got a quiz that’s going to help you determine what the best strategies for your business are right now where you’re at.
So highly recommend that if you have trouble figuring out where you should even begin, go take that quiz. Now, your book recommendation for this week is Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum. I don’t normally love these type of, I’m not even sure how to categorize this book really, but it’s, it’s very much There’s this group of families on an island.
Um, it’s not exactly like the Hamptons, but it’s sim like it’s not high society summer island, but still people who are able to summer somewhere, right? Um, so upper, upper, upper middle class, I guess you could call it, where it’s not like, it feels like these people could be people in your own circle, I guess you could say, where it’s, they’re not super high society, but also at the same time, like, who has a summer home?
I don’t know. Anyways, not the point. But it’s just these normal families, quote unquote, and they’re all living together for the summer on an island, uh, summering together. And it’s just about, you know, the entanglement of relationships, I guess, in as far as how people get along, social circles, things like that.
And you do start the book out with learning that someone has died, basically. And so you’re trying to figure out, you know, what leads up to that and how that happened. But it’s not like a, it’s not a mystery. It’s not a thriller. Someone else who put out a review on it called Domestic Suspense.
You’re like, who died now? But it’s not a whodunit. I don’t know. Anyways, that’s a lot of rambling about it, but it was a great read and I really enjoyed it. And so I wanted to recommend it to you. So I will link to that in the show notes if you’re interested. But again, that is called Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum.
And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.
Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast, and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
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