Growth, EGO, consistency + burnout.

How would you describe how to kick your legs, move your arms AND breathe at the same time, the muscles you use, the timing, coordination and spatial awareness of swimming to someone who’d never been in a pool before?

If you’re creative, how do you succinctly explain to someone who never did art in school as a kid how to draw something from their imagination, how to nurture a particular style, find a perspective or understand the best media for the job?

You just do, not think. 

There are so many things we do that happen almost naturally, without having to analyse the HOWs and the WHYs. But when we’re asked to define the HOWs and the WHYs it’s not so glaringly obvious.

And for me, helping people understand how and why to improve their online presence is confined by similar rules. 

My day-to-day is filled with learning about different businesses, with the luxury of an outsider's perspective to see opportunities to improve their online presence.

But when it came to analysing my OWN work, trying to understand where I was wasting my own energy or gaps in my own marketing, that’s a totally different story.

The objective point-of-view disappeared entirely.

For me, 2020 has exceeded my expectations. I have learnt SO MUCH. 

(Not just about my lack of self-control when there’s still cheese left over from Christmas staring at me from the fridge, and I haven’t had a day off the fromage for 7 days straight.)

I’ve done A LOT of courses, worked with an incredibly diverse range of businesses, had adrenaline highs from being out of my comfort zone (and finding it strangely fulfilling), and savage lows from discovering that a large portion of the country’s small businesses (i.e. potential customers) had gone into hiding once the first lockdown hit here in the UK back in March. 

But one of the things that I’ve learnt that has flipped my outlook of 2021 on its head is content creation.

I know — it sounds like a poncey word that doesn’t mean much. But to me, it means producing, writing, recording things to serve my audience, be it emails, blogs, social media posts, videos, and all that jazz.

I’ve learned that there was a lot of energy and brain-melting hours I had misplaced over the last 12 months.

I don’t like to see it as WASTED time. If I had done everything perfectly from Day 1 then I wouldn’t be able to see the progress and feel the satisfaction of comparing my before and after.

It has helped me better UNDERSTAND the whys and hows of creating content that is going to really make a positive mark on your own businesses (yes, you, reading this blog right now).

And without that fundamental understanding, I don’t believe consistent and sustainable impact is possible.

So here we go. Learn from my mistakes. (Oops I wasn’t supposed to call them ‘mistakes’ was I!)

The Alice of 2020:

Belief #1

“Because my business is comparatively new, I need to do MORE and BETTER than my competitors to instate myself as an expert.”

Initially I saw what other marketers on social media (who had significantly more followers than me) were doing and I tried to one-up them, producing more content and in more detail.

I expected immediate feedback, floods of DMs telling me how great the week-long mini trainings were, people queueing up to book. But it was too much. 

Social media is there to give people bite-sized chunks of information.

These platforms are built to make it easy for people to scroll and scan.

We consume captions and video content on the go, in the queue for the post office, on the tube, out for coffee with a mate whilst we’re waiting for them to order/come back from the bathroom. 

But what I was creating required someone to get out a pen and paper, take notes, be there at the same time every day so as not to miss anything. 

I was getting tired of my own voice and was disheartened from not seeing the results I thought I wanted.

Lesson learnt

I was creating content to make me feel good about being productive, almost just trying to show off that I knew what I was talking about.

I wasn’t thinking about the user, how this content would be received.

I was prioritising my own struggles of needing to feel relevant and in control OVER the struggles that my audience experiences. 

Wanting to produce content at that rate was unsustainable.

I was inconsistent, showing up for over 100 IG stories one week, then 4 the next.

Honestly, I’m not exaggerating. People like consistency, familiarity. So pace yourself.

I’ve discovered it’s not just healthier for me to do a couple of stories a day, but my engagement and views are more consistent. And consistency is a good thing in marketing, I can assure you that (always being present - you know the phrase “Out of sight, out of mind”, right?)

Finally, never compare yourself to others. They have a different audience, a different strategy (if one at all), and a different background. You are you, you have a different way of sharing and interacting with your audience. You can’t emulate someone else’s personality, and that’s why you stand out.

This next 12 months is more for me about keeping my social media following engaged, and doing it in my own unique style, not trying to BE anyone else, no matter how successful they are.

I still want to use it as a platform to teach, show and inspire, but in a more sustainable format, that doesn’t need viewers to go out of their way to get the value from my content.

The Alice of 2020:

Belief #2

“No one cares about what I do when I’m not sitting in my home office.”

Starting out a business where you’re new to the industry, not well-known and want to make a splash, I put the blinkers on and wanted to be seen as driven and professional. Who wants to see my messy office, me blabbing on at the camera whilst I’m making my coffee, my cheesy grin after a good surf?

Lesson learnt

Relatability is one of the most underrated factors when it comes to running a personal brand (where you are the face of the business and always the one point of contact for a potential customer).

The power of social media lies where it shows insight and personality, a behind-the-scenes of the shiny website or string of qualifications.

Particularly because I work with small businesses, an investment into their business can be a big step when they aren’t yet consistently making 4- or 5-figures a week.

So feeling at ease is a biggie. 

Some of the best relationships I’ve had with clients have come from reaching out after they’ve engaged with a non-work-related poll or finding we have a love of the ocean in common. That is a lot more fulfilling for me than working with anyone and everyone.

The Alice of 2020:

Belief #3

“The website designers and copywriters that I’ve learnt from have found success getting clients in Facebook groups, from Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, blogging, through affiliate marketing and cold pitching. I want a bit of that action too.”

It definitely gets tiring trying to produce content for every single one of these platforms.

On top of that, you’ve got to reach out to new businesses, and think of 10 new ideas a week so as not to reproduce the same posts on each platform.

I actually started off trying about 5 of the aforementioned 7 techniques for gaining new clients at the same time! 

Within 6 weeks of trying to be intentional with my marketing I just couldn’t work out how other marketers found success producing content at such an alarming rate.

Quite quickly, even the thought of creating that much content got me overwhelmed and made me feel like I wasn’t working hard enough. And that is NOT a conducive feeling for productivity.

It’s kind of a vicious cycle, where your sense of underachieving translates into a form of brain-paralysis where even half the things on your to-do list suddenly mutate into mammoth tasks.

Then you fall behind and become overwhelmed again by the things you haven’t finished. 

Lesson learnt

First of all, a lot of these marketers had a whole team behind them to keep churning out the blogs, posts, podcasts and infographics.

Little old me only has so many hours in the day. Then, why spend one hour a week on each platform, when you could spend 5 hours creating content for one or two platforms? 

As I had already discovered, consistency and regularity is key.

So putting more energy, thought and strategy into one or two areas immediately helped me nurture my audiences.

I had more time to be more attentive to creating connections with new individuals and businesses, and I immediately experienced a significant increase in engagement. Lesson learnt!

So 2021 for me is about creating connections, being more strategic + taking the ego out of social media. 

In previous years, I’ve seen other businesses writing their annual review and sharing it online, I thought ‘meh, that’s not for me’.

But just this process of reflection and revisiting the changes I have made in the space of 12 months has helped me greatly.

I feel super motivated going into a new calendar year and that I’ve got some momentum to help start me off.

And I really HOPE this has shown you the importance of making mistakes, learning along the way, and finding positive change to grow as a result. 

READY TO ADD PERSONALITY + PROFESSIONALISM TO YOUR WEBSITE FOR THE NEW YEAR?

Let’s create a bespoke package, together, that feels more honest to who you are (as an individual AND as a brand)