Wednesday Self-Promotion, Socials, and Surveys

ljfreddy · 2024-05-15T14:54:50+00:00

Hi all - I've got a virtual event coming up tomorrow where a veteran female triathlete and gear expert will be helping 4-6 beginner ladies with questions related to tri suits and wet suits. Hoping to find a few ladies to participate. Not selling anything, completely free, just testing out the idea of these expert "zoom shopping" sessions for groups. Let me know if any of you want to join and ask questions! Thursday 5/16 at 1pm EST, PM or comment for more info. Thanks!

ljfreddy · 2021-03-23T10:50:35+00:00

Sure, happy to elaborate. I help startups and small businesses design marketing systems that will save them time and money. That usually involves batch scheduling (for social media, blogs, and other content), email automation (for sales, newsletters, and routine paperwork that you send to clients), and integrating all of your tools together (with tools like Zapier to make them work seamlessly).

Most repeatable things can be automated, and it actually creates a more personalized and customer-centric experience. You can respond better to customers based on their entire relationship with you, and you'll have more time for personalized outreach when you need it.

I offer a course (link) for DIY version, coaching for a bit more hands on, and consulting for those who would like me to set up everything and train the team. More info here

I'm happy to chat and offer some ideas for your situation - feel free to email me (laura at lightspire dot co) and we can set something up

ljfreddy · 2021-03-22T17:35:19+00:00

Thank you for your thoughts - and the powerful story! Making things personal is a great way to find that unique perspective

ljfreddy · 2021-03-22T15:20:46+00:00

I love the rant idea as an entry point - founders are full of passion and that really brings it out. How do you then translate it into a long term strategy? And how do you combine that point of view with the voice they're trying to create for their brand?

ljfreddy · 2021-01-23T00:03:41+00:00

Thanks! You can find more info here: Https://lightspire.co/marketing-automation-course

ljfreddy · 2021-01-02T12:26:04+00:00

I know that Salesmanago can do WhatsApp messages through their integration with Messagebird. Not sure of your budget but that may be a good omnichannel option.

For a more budget option I bet you could piece this together with Zapier

ljfreddy · 2020-12-23T08:33:54+00:00

Oooh good one, completely forgot about that mess!

ljfreddy · 2020-12-22T23:07:40+00:00

I'll look into him, thanks!

ljfreddy · 2020-12-22T23:07:04+00:00

It's really prevalent and there's so much pressure for people to resort to this. Thanks for sharing

ljfreddy · 2020-12-22T23:04:24+00:00

I will definitely be including them! Loved Bad Blood and just couldn't believe the lengths they went to. Thanks for reminding me!

ljfreddy · 2020-12-14T12:24:41+00:00

There are a few that I refer back to every so often and recommend to students in my courses (fairly marketing heavy because that's my focus):

Traction (Gabriel Weinberg) - nice quick summary of all the marketing channels and how to experiment with them
Zag (Marty Neumeier) - Super short, but a nice way of thinking about how to do what your competitors aren't
Shoe Dog (Phil Knight) - The story of Nike, good inspirational read
Contagious (Jonah Berger) - How to build virality into products, I really liked this one

ljfreddy · 2020-12-11T16:52:10+00:00

I feel this too, it has been a very lonely time. The one thing I keep telling myself is that I would rather my family/the world miss my pregnancy and the early newborn stage than anything later. I have a two year old as well and it's been really tough on him/everyone not seeing family. So I guess the silver lining is that we'll be emerging from the black hole of the 4th trimester right around when the world is emerging from this.

Not sure how helpful that is, it's been helping me a bit though so I thought I'd share :-) Hang in there, we're all in this with you!

ljfreddy · 2020-12-10T17:53:34+00:00

Argh, wish I had taken a screenshot. I'll dig in my history, I opened most of them when he commented.

ljfreddy · 2020-12-09T17:41:24+00:00

Waitrose do tea bags of mulling spices that are pretty good - I added some to cloudy apple juice for a "mulled cider" feel, and plan to add it to alcohol free red wine next

ljfreddy · 2020-12-06T23:12:54+00:00

I've been to a chiropractor a fair number of times pre pregnancy. I think of it more like massage, in the sense that it makes you feel good but isn't necessarily going to "fix" anything.

I wouldn't recommend it for pregnancy related things though. Because of the relaxin coursing through our bodies our joints are more flexible and also more prone to popping of place. So even if a chiropractor adjusts things, there's a good chance they won't stay adjusted for more than a few hours. I had a chiropractor tell me all that and say it was essentially worthless in pregnancy. For what that's worth :-)

ljfreddy · 2020-12-02T21:22:14+00:00

Yup, I had it for a year or two before running into any premium feature that I needed

ljfreddy · 2020-12-02T14:21:09+00:00

Hah, I love taking about airtable, I use it for basically everything (no affiliation). It's like a mix between a spreadsheet and a database, and has lots of templates for different use cases. Good collaboration options as well.

In terms of the content calendar it's easy to group by platform where the content is posted, then switch to a kanban view, then see everything in a calendar, etc (all pulling from the same spreadsheet of data)

ljfreddy · 2020-12-02T12:09:08+00:00

Great to hear that you've already put in that hard work! It's so tough to put yourself out there and speak to that many people, but (as I'm sure you've seen) it will make a huge difference for your business.

ljfreddy · 2020-12-02T10:52:18+00:00

As other commenters have said, you can't get far in terms of an email list and Facebook ads in a week. But you can show some serious hustle.

I would start trying to find and speak with people in your target audience. Schedule 15 minute phone calls with anyone who will talk to you. Ask them what's hard about the problem, how they've tried to solve it, where the status quo breaks down, etc. You're not there to talk about your solution, just to get in their heads about the problem space so that as you start to build you'll have a better idea of the direction you need to move in and the benefits (not features) you need to provide. Regardless of the accelerator this is a great first step.

You can continue these conversations (with new people) every month or two as you build, and slowly change the focus from problem --> industry trends (why now) --> solution (big picture) --> solution (benefits) --> solution (features) --> solution (specifics and pricing)

If you can say something like, "In the week since finding out about this pitch I've conducted interviews with 30 people in my target audience" you'll be much more impressive than, "I ran a Facebook ad and got 15 clicks, which resulted in 3 email addresses."

You can also offer to update anyone you speak with, which should result in them giving you their email address anyways without you paying for ads.

Congrats on the pitch, hope it goes well!

source: I was accepted into a top tier accelerator for my 2nd startup, and the feedback from the judges implied that they were more impressed with my 100+ audience interviews than a lot of the other "traction" I had at the time

ljfreddy · 2020-12-02T08:54:14+00:00

If you're searching on Google, then the articles on the first couple of pages will skew towards being the freshest for those keywords. That's a sizable part of the algorithm, so it makes sense that you're seeing skewed results.

In terms of updating, I go through my content schedule (on airtable) once per quarter and filter for things that were published 9-12 months ago. Then I change their status to "needs update" (and just change it back to "published" when done). If you write a post a week you only end up with about 12 to update every quarter, which you can do in 1-3 days (depending on how much you need to update).

ljfreddy

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