The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 19. Social Media and Your Blog with Ashleigh Henry

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

We are so excited to share this episode with you all today. Ashleigh Henry is our guest today and she is a marketing and sales consultant - a social media guru. She shares so much insight on social media and how it relates to your blog, how consistency can look different for everybody, how often you should show up on social media, and where to focus your efforts on social media. We also chat about social media scheduling tools, boundaries, the purpose of having a “close friends” list on Instagram, and the first step to getting started and being more intentional on social media. This episode is packed full of valuable information. Tune in to hear more!Check out the show notes (link below) for links and resources mentioned in this episode!Thanks for listening! Connect with us on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsThinking about starting a blog? Check out the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode19

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. We are so pumped to share Ashley Henry with you today. Ashley is an amazing, amazing social media marketing guru who is going to help you so much today. She's blushing as I'm introducing her, but her energy is contagious. Whenever I connect with you, Ashley, I just feel so revitalized and happy and positive. And so I am so excited to share you with our community today. So here is Ashley Henry. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell our listeners all about you.

Hi, that's like a warm welcome. I revitalize. That's like a big heart piece for us. I'm Ashley. I am a marketing consultant and sales consultant too, because we can't talk about marketing without talking about sales. And I've been in marketing and sales for a decade. So just started out super young. I was 15 running sales for a shoe store over a mic, watching their shoes, seeing where they were going and deciding I'm going to run these deals. I'm going to run this. So they would purchase more. And I was one of the highest in the company. At 15? 15. They weren't even supposed to really hire me, but I had a cousin was a manager and she was like, she's turning 16 in like two months. Let's just do it. So I'll never go to a shoe store out of like protection, but

that is awesome. Yeah. It was so much fun. That's where I started. And my mama was also a creative entrepreneur and she would create and create and create and serve and forget to sell. So I would be like, my mom made soap. Would you like to buy some? That was my lemonade stand. That's amazing. That's everything with me. We run the cheetah company. We have a small, mighty team that serves, I think about 35 clients right now. So we're really blessed. Love serving female entrepreneurs specifically. Awesome. So we're really blessed. Love serving female entrepreneurs specifically.

Awesome. So you've just always had a heart for sharing. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because it just feels like sales to me feels like sharing. It feels like service to, to recognize like you need soap to wash your body and you want to smell good and you want clean ingredients because my mom was all about that. So why not buy my mom's soap instead of, you know, soap from the store. Right. Right. Oh my gosh. We are so much alike. We are. It's so funny because I do think a lot of times like in regards to blogging,

we are sharing, but it in turn is kind of selling as well. We're selling the content that we're creating essentially. Sometimes that content is free. Sometimes it's not. And I think that sometimes like you're kind of talking about here, getting through that barrier of when you do have a price tag on something, being okay to share it because it adds value to somebody's life and helps them. It absolutely does. It absolutely does. I'm kind of like an analogy queen. So I can't wait to like share all these different analogies to really hearken back to hit service in sales all at once. I can't imagine if we went into like a great restaurant and we were like, well, what is that wine? Like, can you tell me more about it? They give us a sip and then they just put it back on the shelf and say like, okay, you can go sit down

now. Yeah. But can I purchase it? You didn't offer me a glass or anything of the sorts. We're doing that all the time in the online space specifically. Yes. Yes, we are. So how, so tell us a little bit about the company, the cheetah company. We're in the cheetah coalition, Jennifer and I are with spark and learn from you all the time and feel blessed to be part of that community. But I want you to kind of share with our audience, who is an audience of bloggers or people who are considering starting a blog. So a lot of the people who are listening, who maybe don't have a blog yet, some of them likely do have a social media following. So can we talk a little bit about how social media is important

in regards to a blog, but maybe why it's not the whole piece of the pie? Yeah. Well, let's take it to an analogy to make it really real. The blog is the house. You guys are realtors. You have an open house and you're waiting for people to come in and smell the candles that you put out or your oil diffuser. You have all of the like perfect appetizers on the dining room table. You have some wine, you have some juice, like you have all these things ready to show this house. That's your blog. But then you never tell anyone about it. You don't put it in the paper. You don't put it on social. You don't have signs pointing towards it on the highway. You didn't tell your besties, like your collaborators and connectors that

know other people that need a house. You told no one. You just opened the door and said like, oh, it's an open house. That is a blog without driving traffic to the blog. So social media is one of those pieces, just like a sign pointing towards the blog. Same with email, same with public relations, whether that's grassroots or very heavy and large with something like Forbes or something of the sort. It can be as small as my best friend who has 2000 followers with parallel audience members that need what I'm offering on my blog. Right. So I think it's important because a lot of people feel like, well, I have to have a social media following in order to have a blog or vice versa kind of thing.

And they think that they have to build these two things simultaneously with just as much effort. And so I think that that can be... It can almost stunt somebody from moving forward in either direction, really. So let's call it a social media marketer, for instance, who doesn't have a blog yet, but feels like they have to spend all of this time on social media. Yeah. And because that's kind of what we're, I think, led to believe that influencers who are on social media are spending gobs and gobs and gobs of time. Now, let me say, I do think that there are influencers who are spending gobs and gobs and gobs of time. Now, let me say, I do think that

there are influencers who are spending gobs and gobs and gobs of time on social media, but as a social media marketer expert, can we kind of like remove the veil here? And let's talk about that. Is that necessary in order for someone to grow a blog or to grow their influence in the social media space? No, I think you could spend three very structured days on social media and see more effort than seven days, eight hours a day. Because if you're showing up seven days, eight hours a day, you're burnt out. Your energy shows it. Your vibe is low. Whether you believe in faith or not, someone can energetically tell if you're exhausted. And if you're disinterested in having a conversation, if your

content is subpar because you're showing up to show up, consistency is the lie that we swallowed with ease. We thought consistent means intense. Whereas if we think of it in terms of we're both in metabolism makeover and three, if we think of like all that Megan shares, consistency over intensity wins every time. I believe James Clear also shared that in Atomic Heads. We're not told to like praise consistency the way that we are intensity and consistency with driving traffic back to your blog or vice versa. Now that's, that's the sexy stuff. Even if it's like slower growth, it's more sustainable and the growth that you see, you'll like more. Yeah. Because I think you're going to attract people who that's going to be attractive too. I've never really thought about that. The consistency versus the intensity. Now that you're like, my wheels are turning in my head right now. Right. Well, I'm so glad because we do quite honestly, we talk about consistency all the time. And I, and I do think that we say to our students, for instance, consistency looks different for

everybody. So for some people, consistency is three days a week, writing a blog post for other people. That's one day a week, but also recognize that the rate of growth could be a little bit different, but that's when I think you got to peel it back and say, okay, so what are my goals? And at different seasons in our life, our goals are different and that's okay. That's okay. Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine like telling a mom that has 10 hours to work a week, wants to run a business, has a husband, maybe it's like renovating a house that, Hey, you have to be on seven days a week to see your goal actually come to fruition. And we work with clients that that's their actual truth. They're making multi-six figures working 10 hours a week. They have intense like push times where they have to leverage support

to watch their kids and have two or three hours to work. That's way better than her having to work 50 hours every week to reach multi-six figures and be burnt out and exhausted because of it. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, we're talking to her about starting a blog, obviously. Yeah.

Yeah, of course. Of course. So how do you recommend somebody gets, I guess, I don't want to know if I want to say started, but like, how do you help someone understand you really only need, let's say the average individual, like I would say on average, we all have probably similar amounts of time in a week that we should be devoting to social media if we're in the online space like this. What does that look like? So with three days a week, you're saying about how many hours is that a week that somebody would need to be showing up in social and then kind of dive into a little bit

what that means? What are they doing on social media? Yeah. I was going to say, can we reverse engineer it from activity? So we preach content connection, collaboration, and conversion, and community is at the center of everything. So let's go with, you have a blog. So you have this incredible blog. You're writing three pieces each week. Let's suggest, is that kind of standard for some of your students or is it more like once a week? I think that's what we recommend. We tell them that three weeks is for optimal growth, but I would say, I think it's likely that more of our students are doing one to two posts a week. I bet they're getting anywhere from four to six posts out a month is what I would say is ideally what I think they're getting out.

Okay. Okay. So when I see a blog, all I can think like just one blog post, all I can think is they could take this one blog post and put it in seven different places if they wanted to through a scheduling system and everything's going out whether they're on or not. So it's almost like we've removed this barrier of entry for you to show up on social and do this active work because it's being automated, but it's still humanistic. It's incredibly connective to have content for someone to consume, even if you're not online. So there's the blog post piece. Do you have a scheduling tool? Can you take that one blog post, separate it into very enticing pieces of content that brings

someone so much interest that they go to the next step? And something I do see with bloggers that creates some discomfort for me in terms of like marketing and sales foundations is we get a lot of how-to information or story-driven content, but we don't entice someone with a question. We don't open up content with like a wink, a cheeky, like, hey, there's something for you back here. We're all business in the front and we need a little bit of like business and party to entice someone to leave a social media platform and go read something. So that's kind of the scheduling tool piece.

Let's say however long it takes you to write the blog, check SEO, get your photos, all of that good stuff. And then you're kind of tearing that piece apart, going into a scheduling tool. And one scheduling tool should be able to at least connect you with the main platforms. You may not be able to get onto Pinterest. You might have to use a separate scheduling tool for that. It's kind of finicky, but for us that it takes about an hour to schedule posts and that's it. So I'll write long pieces of content and they're not blogs yet, but it's coming because I'm listening to Amy and Jen, but ultimately like we're, we're piecing this out through email or

piecing it out on Instagram. We're saying, okay, we're going to be on the feed with this. We're going to be on stories, this close friends with this, which I know we're going to talk about later. So it's less about like time spent and more like, what is the activity? How quickly can I get this done with excellence? And then giving yourself more time for connection versus showing up. Showing up doesn't have to be face to cam every single day on social media to prove that you exist. Content proves that you exist and that you have something worthy of sharing. So it all sounds like it needs to be very intentional. Step by step.

So all of that to say, I'm not sure how long it might take someone to write an average blog post for what y'all share with your students. But that time, tearing it apart, putting it into a scheduling system, that's about five hours tops, maybe. on social media without all of the, oh my gosh, it feels weird or icky or whatever that might be. We can get into that, but a connection system, let's say 50 people you want to connect with within a week, two weeks, that's three days a week, chop it down to how many profiles you need to connect with and making sure you're happy and excited to do it whenever you jump on. So not screaming kids, trying to get in the car, doing it before everyone's awake probably would be a better move. So if someone is thinking about their blog and they're thinking about taking that blog post and putting it on say Instagram, for example, and dividing it up, how do they know what their goal is or what their purpose is with that content? How can they

decide why they want to? Are they trying to drive traffic back to their blog? Are they trying to make a connection? How do they decide what their goal is and where to spend their time when it comes to that? That's such a fun question. And so lengthy and hefty, it really does depend on the business goal behind the plan. So something we talk about is like having a regular content creation system for times when you're not campaigning. So when you're just leveraging authority marketing or inspirational and educational pieces that lead back to you as a go-to expert. But ultimately, if you're in a campaign season,

you're only talking about that thing. So right now we're in a campaign season for the Cheetah Coalition membership. The only thing on my feed is about the Cheetah Co. The only thing I'm sharing in my stories is about the Cheetah Co. Emails, same thing. We're having private conversations with folks that want to work one-on-one, but one-on-one is not touching anything on my feed, stories, or close friends list right now. Mine is saying, hey, we've noticed that you may not want a membership right now. You may need one-on-one support DMS for that. We're not going to put it publicly. When it comes to bloggers, it really depends on like, are they being sponsored by a certain company? Do they have a certain amount of time that they need to campaign this thing? Or is this product maybe like an evergreen piece that they can always collect an affiliate piece

from? So if you guys want to share kind of like the massive amount of students that y'all have that are doing one similar thing, I can definitely give a strategy for that. Like, are they always promoting their products or are they always sponsored? I think the majority of our students are promoting affiliate products at this point. Okay. And it's kind of evergreen. It's not necessarily campaign. Yep. Evergreen affiliate point. Okay. And it's kind of evergreen. It's not necessarily campaign. Evergreen affiliate marketing. Okay. And most of them are probably also trying to just do that inspiration piece where they're really just trying to share like their own valuable content that they've created as well. Okay. And kind of who they are, like what they're about and who they are. Okay. So that's a good, a good piece there. We would almost need content

pillars. I don't love using that same thing over and over again. We hear it all the time. So don't like just turn off because we hear content pillars all the time, but what differentiates you from someone else that can share about a health and wellness product? It's you, it's your stories, it's your experiences. It's the things that you're experiencing with the product, but it's also like everything else around you. So considering where do you live? Why is this product important where you live? We're currently working with someone

who's in hormone educator, and she's in a very small niche town off of like the Appalachian mountains system. And she's in a rural area where someone's not going to pay a lot of money for hormone education. So she has to be considerate of sharing, like, I have this incredible mineral thing that you can purchase. They're most likely not going to purchase it. She's recognizing they will probably still choose a very cheap soda. So how can I approach them with

something that doesn't cost them money that gives them a how-to tip and information they can use right now to build trust to then at some point purchase that mineral cocktail. That way they are receiving health and wellness, but they're not having to purchase right away to receive it. So kind of like approaching the product from every different angle. Yeah. So almost building that trust first, which I think is important. I mean, across the board, no matter what we're sharing, building that trust first, whether it's a product or like a service. So like with you, before we joined the Cheetah Co, like we were able to connect, you know, there was a connection there. You were referred to me by Lindsay Chambers. And so I had

a trusted friend. So I think that that goes a long way too, to say, and I think that's how a lot of people honestly are finding Spark Media is just through word of mouth, which is the best form of marketing. So it's, I think, allowing yourself to show up in that space as well as an expert or just someone who's championing somebody in that season of their business or their life and then finding your people that way. So building that solid foundation of trust first and then saying, okay, now here's how I can help you. Exactly. And then I think that feels less salesy. So less salesy. It becomes an invitation at that point, not a pit and sale. so less salesy. It becomes an invitation at that point, not a pitch sale. It's just like,

oh, well, I realized that you're tired and I have this product. Here's my code. It's helped me stay energetic, even though I'm running around like a crazy mom all the time. You see me like running in my business and everything. It just becomes like a layered invite versus a pitch. And that just feels better if we're honest. That feels so much better than something that doesn't feel authentic. Right. Right. And I think that people can sense that too, when they're following you on social media or reading your blog posts, they can sense that like, is this girl just trying to get a sale or is she truly invested in adding value and helping someone? I think that that's a really, really important piece of being a content creator. So that's a blogger, that's an influencer. Being a content creator, I think it's important to show up authentically because you're going to build trust in a

community so much quicker when they know that you're truly in it to help. I say that a lot that I think that bloggers, like one of our job descriptions is to help people. I truly believe that. I mean, you think about all the different ways that bloggers show up and the content that they're creating and almost all of it is in some way, shape or form to help somebody like it's offering a solution to somebody's problem. Always. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you've talked a little bit about like scheduling. Do you have a specific scheduling tool that you recommend? And will you talk a little bit about that scheduling tool and how one would use it in order to,

because I think that the purpose of a scheduling tool is to say, okay, so I have a blog and I know I need to share my content on social media as well to kind of be in that space, but I don't want the bulk of my time to be spent on social media. I'd rather it be spent on my blog. So how can I use a scheduling tool to essentially free up more time? Some of my favorites are Sprout Social. That's like my ultimate. It's a bit more pricey, but the reports and the analytics and the data that you can receive through social listening is my favorite. So being able to like, see what people are already asking about online versus, Oh, let me just like come up with a content piece by

myself. That's, that's way more focused on your time in a double, double way because you're scheduling your posts, but you're also deciding what to write based on what you're hearing inside of social listening. So that's a larger conversation. So are they... Okay. So on that, because we don't use Sprout Social, but I know that you've mentioned this before. We've looked into it, but we haven't made the switch yet. Yeah. When you say you can see what people are asking, is that they can see what they're asking on your social media feed or kind of in your niche. In your niche, you can put in specific phrases to see what are people

requesting all across the world wide web about this specific topic. So it's kind of an SEO tool a little bit. Yeah. And then it's like spidered around where you can just Venn diagram everything and be like, oh, I need to talk about this and this and this. And those kinds of market research tools are just like so underused because in a marketing agency setting, we learn it. I have a marketing degree. So we were like, okay, yeah, we use this thing. And when I came into the online space, I was just like, so are you guys just thinking up your content? Like just... Yes, Ashley. That's exactly what we're doing. As you're saying this, I feel like a complete idiot because like we use, we use this tool for

our blogs. So why the heck are we not using it for social media? I do our social media and I sit down and I'm like, huh, wonder what they want to know about today. Like that, that is 100% what's going on. You just called me out. I'm so glad. Okay. Let's talk about free options before we talk about like more Sprout. There are other ways that you can consider what people are asking and it's super easy. So if you start connecting with some of your competitors, start liking some of their posts, you'll most likely, if they're larger, you'll start to get some of their ads if they're running ads. And then you can look in the comments and see what are people asking about this service, this product? What are they... Even if you're... Let's say you want to go for a really big product.

I don't know if I should specifically say, but I have a favorite bed. It starts with P and it's pricey. And I've just thought, man, it would be so fun to be an affiliate for this bed company because we love it anyways. And now we want all of these beds throughout all of our Airbnbs that we're planning on purchasing. And if I went to their account and started connecting with them, I would start to get their ads and I would see why people were hesitant to purchase that bed because it's extravagantly more expensive than a mattress that I could just go pick up anywhere. But my sleep has extravagantly improved. And so I would love to bridge the gap there through content to create trust.

So competitor ads, looking at people's comments, seeing why they're asking the questions they're asking, bridging that gap where others aren't. you become the go-to expert because they're like, oh, you're my brain. You answered a question before I had to ask it. And that creates trust psychologically. And you don't even know what's happening. And you're just like, I'm in. This girl's reading my mind. Sounds fun. So competitor ads, competitor comments. And then if you guys use Reddit, I love the subreddit called, it's called ask me like I'm five or explain to me like I'm five. So you can go in there and literally ask, I've put in sales course and it's given me information as to like what was missing inside of a sales course to really help people get to the next level. And since we're creating a sales course, we can

reverse engineer that. I have never heard of that. Have you ever heard of that? I've heard people say that phrase before, but I never knew there was like this whole Reddit subreddit thing that you could go and check this all out on. I'm just, my mind is blown right now because we talk about all this stuff when it comes to blogging into writing blog posts and to doing SEO research and how it's so important to serve your audience in a way that's helpful to them. But that's where we've had this disconnect, like Amy said, with social media. How do we serve

those people there? And I think this is something that any blogger could do. Even if you're just creating content, you can go and see what another blogger in your niche is creating and answer those questions that they're getting on their feeds as well. Exactly. That was my next step to say like, have y'all gone into your competitor comments yet?

And when it's not ads and such, we've gotten a lot of information to help, especially the beginner entrepreneur, because we can all try to guess. We're a six figure company at this point. And sometimes it's hard for me to step back into that beginner mindset because I came from corporate and I had businesses before. So my first business was in high school. And so I'm like, how was I thinking in high school versus now? And the women we're serving aren't in high school. So their questions aren't asked in the same format that I was asking

in high school. And the internet wasn't the same in high school as it is now. And our social media tendencies, TikTok didn't exist. So thinking of all of that, I love to go and see who's serving the beginner entrepreneur. What are their actual questions? Do we believe that we can empower them to have self-responsibility to get into their CEO seat that they need to, or are they maybe just trying to make a quick buck? We don't love to serve the quick buck entrepreneurs. That's not our value and goal, but we do love to serve the women that are like, I have this big freaking vision. I keep having all these ideas. I don't know how to execute and actualize it all from my brain to real life.

And that's where we get our answers. I think that's a lot of women in entrepreneurship. So I have all these ideas. What do I do with them? And how do I make them all happen? And also being patient. Like, yeah, now. But how do I know what to do first and all that? I think that that is such a big thing that a lot of us who are in this space are thinking of, you know, like, well, I need to do this and this and this and this. And I think sometimes it's just like calming down, taking a nice deep breath and saying, you cannot do it all. But what's the one thing you want to build?

And then maybe that supplementing thing alongside of it. And how can you do that intentionally? Because I think that it's really easy to be like, okay, so I have a blog and I know I need to be on Instagram and I hear TikTok is really important and Pinterest is important. And I know I need to build my email list too. And so, and then people are like, and I'm out. Yeah. There's no way I can do all of that. Yeah. But I like what you're saying about being intentional with your time to know. And I think that this is the big goal here. So it's saying, okay, so let's say I'm going to spend three days on social. That's enough. That's enough. days on social, that's enough. That's enough. And then, and then walking away. And I think that that is where a big problem is with people in this space. So the boundaries don't exist. They don't exist. So you're on social a lot. So can you share with me and the audience, how can one go about

creating those boundaries? And then, I mean, it's one thing to create boundaries and it's another thing to actually execute and follow through with boundaries. So how can a person do that and feel really good about it? I love that. I'm going to circle back real quick and say sproutsocialleader.com, Hootsuite, real quick and say sproutsocial, later.com, Hootsuite, and one that I am definitely missing. I like Publer. That's very low cost. It serves a lot of platforms and you can get analytics for like $10 a month. I think that's really a good space to start. Those are kind of your scheduling tools that I love. And that creates the boundary itself because you're like, I've already created the content. It's in there. I know it's going to

be going out. It even helps you to know what times are best. It automatically goes out. It's like the most underused piece inside of online entrepreneurship. And it's, it's mind boggling to me at times because I do come from an agency style mindset of we don't need to be on for things to drip out. So that's that piece. Have you ever wanted to start a blog but had no idea where to begin? Or maybe you have a blog that you'd like to update and want some help to make it the best it can be. We know that there are many people out there who have big dreams for their own blog that never happened because they simply feel stuck. The Ultimate Blog Bootcamp is an eight-week course designed to help you create a solid blogging foundation by teaching you how to treat your blog as a business, find your audience, design a website that is optimized for SEO, all while

providing support via online coaching calls each week of the course. There is a private Slack channel for students as well, so questions will never go unanswered. The Ultimate Blog Bootcamp will give you the tools and support to create a blog that has the potential to turn into a profitable business. We are committed to helping each and every student feel empowered and confident with the foundational principles of blogging and the behind-the-scenes work that goes into it. If you don't want to blog alone, we can help. We keep each round small in order to provide each student

the attention and support we believe you deserve during this process. Since space is limited, get on the waitlist today so we can help you with your blog. The link to join the waitlist is in our show notes or go to sparkmediaconcepts.com and click on the ultimate blog bootcamp. So hold on, I'm going to interrupt you really fast. So if you schedule your pieces out, are you one that recommends like, okay, so I have a post going out today at 1030. I need to be on at that time. Nope. No. I think it's such a waste of time to be like, I have to be chained to my desk based on the time that this piece goes out. I think with the way that the algorithms work, because there's many, there's not just this piece goes out. I think with the way that the algorithms

work, because there's many, there's not just one on each platform. I'm going to guess most of the women here, like students are serving on Instagram. I would guess. Yeah. So being on right away when something goes live, isn't necessarily our biggest desire or strategy for our clients. We really suggest to share that piece to your stories, go connect with the people that are already on your list. So we can talk about that in detail in a second too. But let's say you're on there three days a week, you want to connect with five people that you know are ideal customers or clients, boom. Maybe 10, if you're feeling super energetic, we also cycle sync. So that's another boundary keeping piece of like, we check in with our team. Are we all

on the same cycle right now? Are you feeling more energetic? Who has the ability to show up in certain places where everyone else needs rest? And I think that like takes off some pressure. If it's just you, the boundary is right before my period, I'm not trying to sell. If it's just you, the boundary is right before my period, I'm not trying to sell. That's when I am thinking the world is going to end no matter how great my period is or like how calm I feel, no matter what, like everyone hates me. I'm not confident and I'm not going to sell. I'm so glad you're talking about this because Lindsay taught me this and beyond the body and literal mind blown about this, Lindsay taught me this and beyond the body and literal mind blown

about this, about your cycle. So if you have not heard about cycle sinking, like if you think, and you're a woman listening to this, which I would guess the majority of you are, but our cycle kind of works as in the seasons. So we have like a spring, summer, winter, fall. So the beginning of your cycle is the spring and summer. And then the end of your cycle is the fall and winter. And just like Ashley just said, it is, we kind of want to like go inward. Think about how we feel like in fall and winter, we kind of want to go inward. We don't really love being around a lot of people, but in spring and summer, we're like, I love my life. I love people like all this stuff. And so that is when you really like want to show up. It's so interesting. When I did be on the body,

I called Jennifer. She's probably dying that I'm sharing this. And I was like, hi. So Jennifer, I would guess, but when was your last period? And she's like, oh dear. Oh dear. She's much more introverted than I am. And I have no filter and I will ask all kinds of questions. We'll come to find out we like our cycles are fairly synced. And I'm like, okay, so we need to map our periods out to make sure that we are launching during ovulation. And I'm, it's like, it is so true though. So if you have not paid attention to that, I realize some of you are feeling very uncomfortable right now and I don't want you to. It is so important to really look at how you feel throughout the month. That can be a huge

burden lifted truly. Like I now know and understand the week before I am going to be on my period. That's not really a good week for me to show up for a lot of people. It's just not. But during the early part of my cycle, I can show up in a much more confident, happy, joyous way. And that's when I need to be doing coaching or making sure I'm in stories more or things like that, because then I'm more willing to receive that. So just that it could be a whole nother podcast for a whole different day. But I think that that is super important that you brought that up. Obviously I'm passionate about it because it's made such an impact on me

to really understand that about myself instead of just thinking, why am I like this? Like, why don't I want to do anything this week? Or why do I feel unmotivated? And what's wrong with me? Or I just need to quit blogging because two weeks out of every month, I don't want to do this. Well, like play on the weeks that you feel really good and then allow yourself rest because rest is so important too. So important. I totally lost where we were after that. It really comes back to that whole, like giving yourself grace and setting those boundaries though. Yeah.

Around your social media, which is kind of what I think we were talking about was creating those boundaries. Sorry. Got me on a soapbox. So let's say you have the scheduling tool, you know, your energy based on cycle syncing, and now you can like reconnect that to your business strategy. So there are times where we might have to show up in certain ways during your period or right before where you're like, Oh my gosh, I don't necessarily want to do

this. That's the best time to go inward and say like, what would bring me joy, peace, calm, and just like overall happiness to where I could serve right now, even if it's more of like a sprint versus a marathon during that time in your cycle. So for me, I'll affirm things, I'll write things down, and I will also like dance, sing, go for a walk, get a latte, kind of hearkening back to Lindsay Chambers. She has something called a three for me challenge where for I think three days or maybe even a week, you do three things just for you. And they can be as simple as going to get a latte, not scrolling on your phone, not doing anything else while you're on that date. And I try to do that before serving online,

before selling online, because otherwise I'm not in my best energy to do so. And that's a hard boundary because we just think, I don't want to generalize over women, but we are natural servicers. We believe we have to go to the edge and beyond to make sure that we have given enough, but it starts to get into a very messy place of worthiness when we overgive to someone else versus giving to ourselves as well. So I don't really believe in balance, but I do believe in holistic harmony as much as possible between serving others and serving yourself. So some other pieces in terms of like boundaries is, you know, setting timers, ditching notifications completely. If your notifications are on for anything, it's just too much. It's just going to pop up and pop up and all of your, your zhuzh that you had for anything you were going to do that day is just gone. Yeah. Turn them off.

Turn them off. No, I just, I turned my Instagram notifications off a long time ago. I don't get any social media notifications. None. It's hard to focus. It is. It is. And online, it feels like, well, we could have them on.

Like we are on, so why not have these on? But then you're on for everyone else and not for your business and not for your family and not for you. I even have my text message notifications off to the dismay of my family members. But they know if you need to get a hold of me, you're going to have to call or you're going to have to text my husband who does have to be on all the time for being on call for his position. But for me, you're going to have to call or you're going to have to text my husband who does have to be kind of on all the time for being on call for his position. But for me, I'm not going to be on call. I'm not on call. If I'm in creative mode, working on the behind the scenes of our business to create a ton of content, to be put in different places so we can serve a lot of people all at once. Why should I be taking several text messages from friends and family at that same time? My energy is now dispersed instead of focused.

I think that that's really important because that's something... If you don't have screen time turned on on your phone, I would highly recommend that you do it because then you can get a real clear idea how much time you're spending actually looking at your screen. And then you can feel very disturbed by the way. But yeah. But when I look through my screen time, sadly, behind social media, my next one is text messages. It's how much I'm texting other people. And that is something to look at as well when you're creating those boundaries. So when I realized that I started using, I have an Apple phone and they have focus that you can turn on.

So like Kate is at parents day out three days a week. So focus gets turned on from nine to noon, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And I don't, I don't get any notifications during that time. Cause this time needs to be super intentional. And I do think that that's helped. And then somehow if you were an Apple watch as well, somehow mine quit syncing with my phone and it's, it is driving me a bit crazy, but I'm learning to just let it go and not figure it out because every time my watch would buzz, then I would be on my phone. So think of those like

little things that are causing you to like, let's say you are sitting down to write a blog post or schedule your social media for the week. And you have one hour allotted for, for that task. And you need to get it done in that amount of time. If you have your social media notifications turned on and your text messages, and you're going to answer a phone call, you're not going to get it done. And then you're going to be mad and you're going to be frustrated that it didn't get done. So instead I think work on the front end of it and say, how can I set this time up for success and then work forward on that. Even if you need to put your phone in a different room, take off your watch, do whatever you need to do. I think can be super helpful. And those are hard. I'll be honest. We rely so much on our phones. We've been trained to do that.

And I think that then when we realize it's kind of a problem and messing with our productivity, like creating that new system is tough, but I think it's important. Yeah. And it almost has to be identity-based versus just system. Like here's my system. It has to be identity-based of like, I am a focused blogger that focuses during this time to serve my community versus this is what I went through. I'm a bad friend because I turned off my notifications and I only answer text messages once a week. Is that sustainable for everyone? No. Do I feel like I can grow this business to

multi-six figures by the end of the year being in my text messages seven days a week? No. I have to give phone calls. I have to schedule times to catch up on 300 text messages. Is that a lot? Yeah. But it feels better doing it in one sitting and being like, I am just serving my friend group and my family group right now versus always being on. I've never thought about that. It takes a lot of... I have lost friends over it, but that's because they couldn't grow with where I am currently in the season. And that's okay. They'll come back at some point or they won't. And that's fine. But there are other friends that are like, girl, I get it. I can't wait to see you on Friday. They know what I'm going to

respond. And they know I'm going to be like, Hey, I have my latte. Like I'm ready to respond. How you doing? And it creates a boundary, but it also creates a loving, different experience. And some of my friends have turned off their notifications because of it. Yeah, that's really inspiring. It just allows you to be present with them when that is the time that you're going to do that versus feeling like you're distracted by your phone at that point in time. Because I know that's how we often feel is that you're sitting there doing one thing and feeling like you should be doing another thing. I mean, I can tell you that sometimes I'm doing laundry feeling like I should be working, but then when I'm working,

I feel like I should be making a meal for my kids. No matter what you're doing, you have this guilt that you should be doing something else. So I love the idea of putting it into these pockets of time where you can just be intentional and focused exactly in that moment. Yeah. Oh my gosh. The laundry piece really got me. Cause I was just like, yeah, I should do laundry. Y'all. I went to a wedding vacation last week. I had to unpack my suitcase from a previous trip to pack the suitcase for the last trip. And I looked at my husband. I was like, I'm going to do laundry this weekend. And then I laid on the couch and I was like, I should be doing laundry, but I was so exhausted. I was like, I'm just not going to do it. So it's almost like

retraining yourself out of the shame cycle too. Cause I know like if I called you Jennifer, I was like, I'm doing laundry, but I think I should be blogging. You'd be like, what? And we talked to ourselves like that all the time. Like you should be doing this thing. And we're just like the micromanage managee boss that we didn't want in corporate. Oh my gosh. Right. I, yes, because I have said that. So Jennifer and I have these interesting conversations daily, but a lot of times I've called her or she's called me and, and I'll finally say, well, I think that you'll be mad. Like, and she's like, why, why would I be mad that you didn't get something done or do

something? Or if I decided to take the afternoon off instead and like chill or rest or read a book or whatever. And I've had to remind myself, like, Jennifer's not my boss. Like we're a partnership. We're best friends and we're, we're partners in this, you know, but like, she's not my boss. We're a partnership. We're best friends and we're partners in this. But she's not my boss. We don't want to let one another down. But isn't that the beauty of entrepreneurship is we answer to ourselves. And so I think at the end of the day, when we look at all these things that we want to do, we want to grow our blogs. We want to create a community on social media that hopefully will bring traffic to our blogs or bring more community to our blogs.

We have to ask ourselves, what can I give up or sacrifice? We're going to actually do a podcast, Jennifer and I, on some of the things that we have to sacrifice in order to get the things that we want in our life. And that's really hard. But I think that that's a really honest conversation. And I think one of the things that we have to sacrifice is the constant guilt and shame that when we're in one space, we need to be in another space or, okay, well, I'm building my blog and I'm spending a little time on Instagram each week, but everybody's saying that TikTok is really important. So I should be there too.

And I think it's just allowing yourself to be like, no, this is where I'm growing. This is where I'm intentional and this is where I'm intentional. And this is where I'm happiest. And I don't feel so stretched thin and burned out and that's okay. And allowing yourself to be exactly where you are. I think that that's important for entrepreneurs of all kinds to know, like you can never do it all, but what you're doing, we can learn to be more intentional at how we're doing it. Right. Looking at like, where is the growth come from? Is it coming from Instagram or is it maybe no longer a place where we need an extra piece of traffic, but not guilting ourselves for not being on Instagram

if we're like starting something new. So if like your people aren't responding well to static posts and you feel like video content will help go go over to TikTok with intention. But learn the strategy while you're still working Instagram really, really well and keeping up with the rest of the pieces and asking yourself, what can I commit to something like a new traffic driver? When we bring the blog on and Pinterest for our company, I'm already nervous of what that's going to look like, but I'm already mentally prepping of our team is going to be stretched a little bit more. Something will have to fall while we do this thing versus this thing. It's always like a versus in the most loving way. And I think if we like do a versus with laundry versus blogging, we're going like,

they're not all glass balls. Some of them are plastic. We can let some of them fall. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes, they are. And it doesn't mean that you won't pick it up more again later. I think that that's a good point that like balance kind of doesn't exist. You know, there are going to be times that some of the plastic or rubber balls get dropped and that's okay. It doesn't mean that you're never going to do laundry ever again because you decided to start a blog, you know, like, but it just might mean that in this season, like you might, you might do the laundry, but it might not be folded. Yeah. And that's okay. Me. Yes. That's me. I said that. Cause that's me too. That's me too. And leveraging support anywhere we can is important because we're always thinking we have to do all of it. That's why we are talking about leveraging some pieces of automation

to be more human with our blogs and with social media while still serving really well. Yeah. It's like service community and sales, not just putting in all this time for zero return. We talk a lot about sales and that's where the masculine portion and energy comes into our company is because I'm, I'm cool with strategy. I'm cool with sales. I'm ready to like help you do it. The feminine part is indirect service through content, showing up, connecting, creating relationships. That's where we got lost in sales on the masculine side was the lack of relationship. Yeah, I can see that. So one more thing before we go, I want to ask you about, because we talked about this a little bit

before we hopped on here is recently you added on Instagram, like a close friends list. And I've seen other people do this as well. And I think that this is a way that you can be a little bit more intentional with your following and maybe spend less time. So will you kind of just briefly dive into that a little bit and share with them why adding that? What's the purpose of adding a close friends list on Instagram and how can that better serve you to be more intentional? Okay. I love this. So close friends, basically if Amy and Jen are in my close friends list, when I post there, I'm going to populate at the top of their story feed. So over hundreds of people that y'all follow thousands of people you follow, I'm going to the very top. There's your

story and there's my story. So if I'm showing up there three to four days a week with very juicy content, private information that I'm only sharing with you guys. Some of the stuff that one-on-one clients have to pay for and are just like slivered out. You guys feel like connected to me, connected to the connection, connected to the strategy. You're seeing me as the go-to expert on my stories. I'm using that as like the opt-in wall. So my regular stories are going to have pieces of the same strategy, but then I'm going to say for the extra pieces that we're talking about, or this different value piece, you're going to need to jump on the close friends list. There's also some protection there. We've noticed that imitation is happening a lot in the online space. We don't love it.

So I protect some of the more guarded potential, like paid pieces of strategy and the close friends list, because I know who's going into it with someone that is blogging. Let's say you have this product and you want people to be interested in it. So you're on your stories, you're sharing about it. You're sharing that you have a blog post. You maybe share a feed post that talks about that same product. You can share about like the story of the story. So the story of why you're serving and selling with this product, some of the information and share three benefits of this product, let's say, and then say for the fourth and a potential to win one of these, jump on my close friends list so I can serve you a bit more, show you the extra feature and you can do a

giveaway. So you're populating to the top. People are like opting in. It's a micro conversion of trust to the macro conversion of purchase. I didn't know they jumped to the top of your feed. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause people get buried. Buried. Like you don't see the people that you really truly want to connect with. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's kind of where the connection system comes in, which I think we're going to talk about later on in a different episode. But having a connection system, knowing who your ideal clients and customers are,

and actually going to connect with them is the follow-up to all of the content that you've created. If you're just indirectly serving through content, not outreaching to the people that actually need it, we're missing a really valuable piece in the strategy. So let's just kind of summarize somebody that's a blogger. We've talked about so much. So they've got all these ideas for blog posts. They decide maybe Instagram is their social media tool of choice at this point. So they want to create more boundaries. They want to be more intentional. So how do they get started? What's the first thing that they should do in order to kind of create this sort of system for themselves? All right. So look at your overall life and ask

yourself, how much time do I have to work in a week? What are my overall goals with my blog and my business? And then say, I have an allotted amount of time of X amount of hours. Start to consider what are the activities that can fit into those hours that are profit generating. So leveraging automation for profit, a scheduling tool to take your content to many places, even if you're not on. A connection system to know exactly who you're going to connect with when you jump on. So let's say you look at your last six to 10 posts on Instagram. Who's in your likes? Who's

in your comments? Are they ideal customers and clients? Put them in a spreadsheet, put them on a sticky note, put them in your notebook, whatever. Connect to them for the next three to four weeks. See if you can help them get to a massive conversion like a purchase. And overall, having some type of calendar, which I know we said we wanted to talk about, an editorial calendar of what's going on the feed, what's going on your stories, what's in your blog, are you taking it to email, knowing all of the places you're going to be serving with content, that's ideal. And it sounds like a lot, but if you have 10 hours to work and five of those are for automation pieces, so you can just show up, connect, serve, and sell, it takes so much off of your plate really, really quickly.

So those are the main things. Then we talked about turning off notifications, setting time limits, having focus on like Amy shared. And I love just showing up with service in mind and making sure you're in your really good energy, especially cycle synced. So a lot of joy, a lot of peace. So do you plan your editorial calendar out like for the month at it, like at a month's time you do quarterly? I do quarterly. That's kind of like advanced. I could see someone at the beginning being like, Oh my God, what would I talk about for the next quarter? But for the month is perfect. Some folks just start with a week and that's perfect too. If you have sponsorships for a month, you'll be able to like reverse engineer that. Right. That could be a podcast as well.

You've shared so much like, oh my gosh. I, yeah, this has been amazing. I hope that everybody really just, you might want to play this again and then maybe again, because Ashley just brought it today. So thank you. You're so generous with all of your knowledge. Yeah, you are for real. And I appreciate that. That is amazing. And I think that that is so important in this space. We are firm believers of community over competition and knowing that there are, there is enough space for all of us to help one another out. And so thanks for partnering with us and feeling that way too, and being willing to serve our audience as well. And I know that they are going to want to connect with you. So if you would just let them know how they can find you

and where they can connect with you. Yeah. And I just, I can't imagine being on here for, it's been like an hour, I'm going to guess, an hour and saying the same thing that we've all heard. Oh, consistency, show up, just, just share a ton of content, never connect with anyone. Like that would be not worth the person's time. That's maybe going for a walk and listening to this or getting ready for their day. We can get connected on Instagram. That's my favorite place to show up at by Ashley Henry. My Ashley is A-S-H-L-E-I-G-H. And soon we'll be the official Cheetah company. So depending on when this comes out, we'll be at the Cheetah company. So just check. Yay. Exciting times. It's fun to watch you grow. So back at y'all. Yeah. Thanks, Ashley.

Thank you. Thank y'all. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at spark media concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the ultimate blog bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.