Ask Me Anything: Pivoting Your Business, Social Media Toxicity, and Exposure
![Ask Me Anything: Pivoting Your Business, Social Media Toxicity, and Exposure Ask Me Anything: Pivoting Your Business, Social Media Toxicity, and Exposure](/pic/ask_me_anything_pivoting_your_business_social_media_toxicity_and_exposure/UFJ5ZVkyNWFvbjA_.jpeg)
all right all right all right all right welcome welcome welcome to one of my favorite times of the week because it's my favorite primarily because i get to connect with you for our weekly sessions of ask me anything this is my dedication to give back what i am learning along the way that so we can grow our businesses together my question of the day for you is what is your favorite social media platform y'all there's so many facebook instagram i'm like linkedin uh twitter is still kicking clubhouse uh pinterest y'all if you're asking me i am still showing up still creating youtube videos still creating blog posts still creating newsletters but before i answer what my favorite social media platform is right now i want to hear from you so leave it in the comments below because i just want to get a pulse let's dive into questions now if you're watching live you can leave a question and i'll answer it live we're going to dive in first two questions that have been pre-asked and this is a question about the benefit of hashtags is there any benefit of using hashtags in instagram stories now the answer is yes but they're not as effective as using hashtags on post for a couple reasons the first one being that stories disappear in 24 hours so somebody's going to have to find your story within 24 hours for it to be discoverable or noticed versus a post or if you're using a hashtag depending on the size of the hashtag it can be viewable for much longer secondly um what you have to do is it's a little bit it's like one step extra to find a hashtag story so for instance you go to a hashtag like you search for a hashtag on instagram and you're brought up to posts not stories you actually have to go to that hashtag and then click on the stories of that hashtag so one extra step so for those two reasons you could still use them and they work but maybe not as effective as they are with uh hashtags on post now the goal is for us to understand that hashtags are always useful but maybe not in the way that you expect so like always as a reminder hashtags are great for discoverability not engagement your posts can be discovered but a hashtag doesn't guarantee that somebody's going to be or have the higher likelihood of engagement right so we want to make sure that if you are using hashtags like i know it was really popular to add like 30 hashtags put the hashtags shrink them down really small and then put like a sticker or a gif over them to hide the hashtags but essentially you want to make sure that your story or your post really does address what the hashtag address is so i believe you need to pair hashtags with quality content to get engagement like it's not enough for you to use the hashtag and be like boom i'm gonna get the thing that i want uh not exactly like always you probably heard me say you want to keep hashtags relevant to your location industry you want to keep hashtags relevant to the caption you want to keep hashtags that are relevant to what's in the photo when you're hitting those main categories of your hashtags there's going to be a higher likelihood for somebody to find your content and be like oh i want to now engage with this content because it's speaking to exactly for the thing that i'm searching for uh let's go into a live question from sheila she asked i'm new to instagram how do i make a video and save it so i can post it on facebook too well you can do this in two ways sheila if you are making a series of stories when you are in your stories as long as it's in the 24 hours in the upper right hand corner you're gonna see three dots you will be able to save that story or you could save it as a video all of the stories connected together as a video you can export that video you can save that video to your phone and be able to repurpose it to facebook if you go live on instagram before you know you go live and then at the end of your life it will give you the option to download and save that video so this is an amazing opportunity for business owners who say like oh i don't have a videographer or i'm not great on camera well actually by going live or by creating stories on instagram and saving that video you have the opportunity to repurpose it on other platforms thanks for asking that question live let's get into a question i'm really excited about jamie asked how would you use instagram to announce a new business stemming from an existing business another thing i really want to make sure and focus in on is that we want to make sure that the messaging for our business is as clear as possible now i know as business owners we're like we're totally clear but when you think about how much information your followers are seeing it may or may not be the top of their mind that you're adding another piece of your business for them to invest in or get interested so before we actually get into the announcement i'm going to ask a question what percentage of your income is dependent on the previous business or on the current business because you're like hey i have a business and i'm now having another business and i want to announce that on on social media great but if you're using social media and your current business comprises 95 of the income that you're currently making and this new business is only bringing in five percent of your income you have to take your followers on a journey you can't immediately start saying i'm only selling this this is the thing i'm doing i'm only doing this because then your followers are going to be like wait a minute i was following your account for x and now you're saying and now you're doing y what happened there so a suggestion or a key metric to keep would be to base the speed of your transition or your pivot on that percentage so if all of a sudden you have business x and then you launch business y and business why all of a sudden is bringing 50 or 60 of your income that's a really good sign that your business can substantiate and uphold a whole new set of followers and a revenue stream and you could talk about business x and y with equal proportion putting the gas on building out that next business the goal and the idea is to take your followers along the journey with you so that people don't feel like wait a minute this person feels very scattered or wait a minute this person's doing like a million things or worse a person followed you to learn or know or trust about issues of x and now you're talking about why and they're like wait a minute i feel like this person isn't respecting the agreement we got into about learning why i originally followed this person so the goal would be to be patient as you pivot to play the long game and to increase the content for the new business over time now i get it there is a temptation to like rush you want things done and you want to grow this next building business like yesterday but you have to understand that there are a group of people who are so ready to support business why but you got to give them time to warm up to that the goal like always friends is to bless and release those who choose to unfollow you remember you got into an agreement so anybody who's following you on youtube anybody who's following you on facebook or instagram they started following you because you started putting out posts or conversations or content or education around business x that was an agreement you got into if you decide oh i'm done with x i'm going to y great that's your prerogative but remember if people are unfollowing you because you're no longer teaching talking empowering about x it has nothing to do with you it has nothing to do with your business and has nothing to do with your capacity for success it simply means that your followers said hey you chose to change the terms of the relationship you chose to change the terms of the content you're producing so it's no longer a fit for me no problem bless and release okay speaking of blessing and releasing let's bless and release some of these questions that are coming in um let's go into emma i'm stuck i have a business account for my set designer membership website and a personal account for my own set design work and my dog i both talk about my industry i don't know how to make the most of both accounts so this answer is going to come to emma and anybody else who is debating having separate business and personal so for years i am talking about for 12 years i only had a personal account now i was using this personal account to talk about my business and businesses my husband my dog my vacations as well as creating educational content and i felt like i was okay using one account to mix the both now it sounds like emma you're kind of mixing the both so you're gonna have a very hard time determining what content goes on each account if you are okay mixing personal and professional content and you think your audience is resonating with it the question i have for you is is it beneficial for you to have two accounts now if you're saying no jasmine i want to keep my personal account private and i really just want to have a small group of people follow it and that's where i feel like i can share all the things and show who i am in a very unguarded way awesome great then that should offer a very clear distinction of the break between the two but if you're saying jasmine i'm kind of sharing very similar content across both platforms and i don't know which one i should be using it's a very clear answer that if you're comfortable sharing professional and personal and people are resonating with professional and personal then it might make sense for you to have one account now in the past year and a half yes in the past year and a half started a business account and on all social media it's social curators you can find us social curators on instagram facebook and what we're trying to do there is to keep content that highlights less about me as the founder and ceo and more about our community we highlight our team members we highlight really amazing success stories we give tutorials on that account it is very very empowering of the user so i decided for the first year of social curator that i was going to be creating the content in that account and now what we've decided is that we have a team dedicated to creating tutorials and helpful content for the user so again i'm talking about my journey both mixing them and then separating emma i have a question for you maybe it might make sense for you to connect them to um okay so belinda says question if you are going live monday through friday and you have the exact same people following you and the rest are not what can you do to create interest with the rest of the group not engaging or watching your lives so belinda i have a couple ideas now i always believe that i don't have answers i simply have ideas for thing for us and you how to try to get that engagement popping back in so number one i'm going to be very honest and answer that i do not try to convince anybody of anything like if there are people who are watching this live thank you awesome i appreciate you there are people who saw this live or they're maybe scrolling through youtube or scrolling through facebook and they saw and they kind of scrolled on by i'm not gonna sit here and try to convince you to watch this video i'm just not it's either you saw the caption and you're like i wanna learn more about that or hey you wanna pop on and have a conversation and get caught up around growing your business online awesome i'm not going to try to convince you otherwise now i do know that people like this now we're moving to point number two and that that's that people like to learn in different ways i myself am not somebody who learns by way of live videos i prefer learning by way of podcasts i prefer learning by way of stories so just because you're creating a live it doesn't mean that your followers want to consume or learn or converse in that way so the minute that you understand that people want to learn differently as do i is i am coming on live even though i don't learn this way i am coming on live i'm creating a long-form video over 20 minutes to be out on facebook youtube linkedin i am doing this for the people who learn by way of video and visuals now just because you have people who follow you we cannot assume they all learn the same way so i'm going to encourage you to take a step back and have a little bit of fun i create stories short form videos and photos i create long form videos that are recorded and produced by way of a videographer i record live videos that then sit in perpetuity that's just me popping open my laptop i create posts i create blog posts i create podcasts i am creating content for how somebody wants to consume the content i am not creating content to teach people how to consume it the way that i think that they should i hope that that makes sense please was that a little harsh was that a little rougher on the edges y'all could let me know i'm just out here speaking my truth let's talk about toxicity the question from sami says really social media has become so difficult with all the crazy happenings in the world this last year it feels so toxic and it's just been hard to still show up because of it now i'm actually not going to address what you sami believe is toxic and i'm not going to address what i think is toxic because they could be two different things what somebody thinks is toxic the exact same content somebody else could look at that and be like wow that's really enlightening so what i really tried to focus on doing is to understand that the past year has been hard on everyone but if you have a message to share you have to remain undaunted you still have to show up if you believe that growing your business online is important to what it is you want to do you still have to show up online if you have a message to share you still have to show up online if you want to further your purpose now can you do all of this without being online of course will it happen as fast or as big as you'd like it to maybe not so if we know that this past year has been hard on everyone and if we know that some people view things as toxic and other people don't i'm going to hold on to one truth and sami between you and i i do feel i have sense i have seen from my perspective a lot of toxicity but i'm going to come out and remind people that you can be what the world needs you can change the narrative and you have the capacity to be the good on social media i hope that the content that i'm putting out is part of the good i hope that with all of my heart but you want to know what semi somebody can look at what i am saying right now and think jasmine is part of the toxicity jasmine is the part of the people who are telling people to still be unsocial you might like this other people might think it's toxic if you happen to be seeing this and you happen to think wow that's very toxic i'm going to be very clear and ask you to please unfollow me please mute me i do not want to be part of the thing that is making you feel less than hurt or overwhelmed and very much like i am asking people if they find what i am saying to be toxic to unfollow me we are in control of what we see we are in control of what we hear if what you're seeing is infusing a lot of toxicity it is because your friends family or people that you're engaging with online have liked or commented the things that you think are toxic last year in 2020 i went through a massive unfollow like there was just too much in my feed that didn't bring me light it didn't bring me happiness it didn't bring me joy and it held me back and i thought to myself wait a minute i am drinking poison and expecting other people to to change i am drinking anger and expecting other people to change i am drinking fear and expecting other teen things to change what i realized was that if i wanted to stop seeing the anger the fear the toxicity i had to unfollow unfollow unfollow unfollow that was it and guess what my thieves changed now do i know that there were people who are upset that i unfollowed them maybe but i'm not in control of how somebody feels i am in control how i feel so sammy if you think things are toxic number one control yourself if you need a break take the break if you need to get offline get offline your mental health is health take care of yourself if you are in an okay place to continue to pursue number two be the change you want to see i think john f kennedy said that you must create the good the joy and the light that you want to see on the internet we are all responsible to leaving and making this place better and then number three if that still don't work unfollow unfollow unfollow friends that is how we roll and that is how we do athena said i am struggling with being consistent with my content on all platforms and athena i have to tell you there is no magic pill we are not in the matrix where i'm going to offer you the blue peel or the red pill consistency is an act of discipline that's it that's it that's it the reason i am consistent okay i'm gonna be honest i'll be very honest this morning i woke up and the very last thing i wanted to do was make this video that's it i'm being honest i did not want to put together the presentation like paginate create talk to the team about it shout out to courtney for helping i did not want to pop open my computer at 8 15 in the morning because i didn't have a good night of sleep my daughter's sick i am going into a full-on 10-hour work day i'm going to be doing things today that exhaust me and that overwhelm me and the last thing i wanted to do was get on this video i did not want to be consistent with my weekly live creation videos but it's a discipline i am choosing to give and show up and serve why because i believe that i become better when i do things that make me uncomfortable i believe i grow when i share what i know i believe that i can look back at the week and say to myself i did everything i possibly could to grow the business i can put my head on my pillow tonight and look to my team and say i showed up the best i could i did all the things i humanly could have done to grow the business and push the needle forward so on the days that i don't want to be consistent like this morning i choose discipline and i choose to say that my actions must map my aspirations that what i dream of in the future the jasmine of 2023 will look back at the jasmine of 2021 and say thank you for pushing through on the days that you did not want to push through thank you for showing up on that friday when that was the last thing you wanted to do so to your future self of 2023 on the days that you have a hard time being consistent it's okay if you can't show up every single day totally fine but whatever number you decide to be consistent on if you say i'm gonna post three times in a week or four times a week whatever the case may be you choose your number when you choose it it is an active discipline to stay consistent and it is the consistency that will get you to where you want to go it is the consistency that takes a great basketball player who is in the professional nba it is the consistency that takes a great professional basketball player and makes him or her a legend it is the professional golf player golfer golfer it is the professional golfer who gets out on the green every single day that empowers him or her to win championships it is the runner who runs every single day who works towards getting that pr quicker than the runner who does not run every single day so darling so friends whatever your aspirations are your actions must map to them you cannot want to be a millionaire without doing the work you cannot want to have your porsche maserati or bentley without doing the work that's just not how life works i am being consistent with the dream and the hope of what i see in the future and i hope the very same for you it is not glamorous most days it's not fun it's not sexy it's not instagramable but it's worth it so friends i hope you have a beautiful day thank you for showing up i wish you all the stinking best if you happen to find this conversation helpful or empowering i would love more than anything for you to share it or pass it on to a friend tag somebody who needs to hear it i am sending you love and gratitude i appreciate you all
2021-06-28 00:42