marketing | Beyond Your Side Hustle

Hustleburg Episode 4 – Answering Listener Questions 1-23-20

Listen to Hustleburg

Answering Your Marketing Questions

In this Q&A episode of the Hustleburg podcast, our host Brett Bittner discusses where to start creating content for your business online. He talks about how to determine the most important platforms for you, the starting point when creating the content for those platforms, and where you should be posting in 2020. He also details how to listen to your audience, add value in that community, and how to present your solution to it. Finally, in response to a question from an upcoming guest, he shares how you can build your organic follows on any social media platform around your business.

If you’re just getting started marketing your business online, Beyond Your Side Hustle offers a FREE Getting Started Guide.

Find out more about Beyond Your Side Hustle here:

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Hustleburg Listener Community
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Brett’s LinkedIn

If you enjoyed what you heard in this episode, please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on your favorite player. Each episode is available on its own post, with the entire catalog here. It’s available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast catcher. We listen to this show and our favorites on Castbox. It’s hosted by Podbean. We appreciate your attention, and we can’t wait to have you back for the next episode.

Be a Guest on Hustleburg

If you have any questions you’d like to have answered on an upcoming Q&A episode, please take a moment to visit beyondyoursidehustle.com/podcastquestion and ask there. If you’re a St. Pete businessperson who’d like to sit down for an interview, please reach out to us here.

Hustleburg Episode 3 – Interview with Kara Wright Photography’s Kara Wright

Photography Lessons

In this episode of the Hustleburg podcast, Brett Bittner meets with Kara Wright, photographer and owner of Kara Wright Photography. Kara Wright Photography focuses her lens on weddings, engagement shoot, and real estate photography in Saint Petersburg and Tampa, Florida.

Brett and Kara discuss her photography business in its infancy after a move from the DC area, her favorite shoots, and how exciting it is to find the perfect angle for every shoot.

Connect With Kara Wright Photography

Find out more about Kara Wright Photography:

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The Knot

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Hustleburg Episode 2 – Answering Listener Questions 1

Your Questions, Answered

In the first Q&A episode of the Hustleburg podcast, our host Brett Bittner discusses how he came to start Beyond Your Side Hustle, five books for any budding entrepreneur, five podcasts every small businessperson should be listening to, how to balance your 9-5 and your side hustle while you’re building, and what types of documentaries will help you building your business.

If you’re just getting started marketing your business online, Beyond Your Side Hustle offers a FREE Getting Started Guide.

Find out more about Beyond Your Side Hustle here:

Website
Hustleburg Listener Community
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Brett’s LinkedIn

Where to Listen to Hustleburg

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Are You Making Time To Listen and Respond?

“Yep”

“Uh huh”

“Wow. Really?”

You’ve said those things when you’re trapped in a conversation with someone who only talks about themselves and their interests, right? You never get a chance to offer a real response, adding the things above when they pause to breathe. You really are trapped in that conversation, but you aren’t sure if they would even notice if you left, no matter how rudely you made your exit.

Listening to What They Need

Remember when we talked about the guy who sold refrigerators at the party like a psycho? We discussed the need to listen in order not to be “that guy.” Real listening. Actual, active listening. Not what we do most of the time, which is to be so busy thinking about what we will say next that we don’t actually hear what was said to us.

On social, that means consuming a lot of content by those in our community. It results in reading, listening, and watching what those who follow you, and your competitors, share. You have to know them, their likes, and their dislikes, to fully engage with them and include them in the community you build.

This consumption isn’t just of the posts they create though. You also need to read the comments and replies they make as well. There is even more truth about who they are and how they feel in the reactions they have to what others create.

Your effort can’t stop here though. You are posting to your accounts, reading/watching/listening to the people who matter to you and your brand, and then there’s the most important piece of advice for engaging your community.

Respond With Care and Thought

You have to respond to them thoughtfully. You have to comment, reply, or react to their content in a relevant way that shows that you’re listening and that you care. The easiest way to do this is to be grateful, both inside and out, about every interaction you have online. When you respond to every comment, even if it’s just with a simple “thank you,” you build your relationship with that person. When you go beyond that thanks with a heartfelt, honest reply, you are building a lifelong relationship, instead of a transactional one with that person.

Early in your digital marketing journey, it’s easy to broadcast what you want to say and say that you’re too busy for anything else. This is actually the best time to build the habit of listening actively and responding thoughtfully. When you make it part of your routine early on, it will remain a part of your routine throughout the rest of your digital life. It will follow you from platform to platform, no matter which one gets the attention you crave and allows you to interact best with the community you serve. Take advantage of the early days by making this a part of your activities online.

Hustleburg Episode 1 – Interview with Lake Law Firm, P.A.’s Sheila Lake

Lake Law Firm, P.A. on Hustleburg

In the first episode of the Hustleburg podcast, our host Brett Bittner meets with Sheila Lake, attorney at law and owner of Lake Law Firm, P.A. Lake Law Firm focuses on property law, civil litigation, and business formation, practicing in Florida and the Middle District Court of Florida.

Brett and Sheila discuss her journey from bartender to earning her J.D. and starting her practice in Saint Petersburg, what it’s like having a law firm while also being a mom and grandmother, and her involvement in the community. They also discuss her involvement with I Support Youth, an organization teaching young people how to be educated, strong, and successful.

Find Out More

Find out more about Lake Law Firm, P. A.:

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Hustleburg Preview

If you’re like me, you want to know about your community… you want to know about the people, what they do, and how they add value to your neighborhood. Sure, you can read the paper, connect on social media, or ask for recommendations, but that doesn’t always really acquaint you. Specifically, I’m curious about small businesses here in Saint Petersburg, and if you are too, I’ve got the podcast for you. It’s called Hustleburg.

What is Hustleburg?

Hustleburg is an interview-style show, inquiring with some of St. Pete’s small business owners, probing them about how they got to where they are, how they built their business, and how they’re serving our community.

If you are interested in the triumphs, the struggles, and the effort that goes into running a business? These local small businessmen and women will take you inside their business, looking at what they do each and every day.

If you got to know your local barber, shop owner, restauranteur, interior designer, or attorney, would you be more apt to “shop local,” supporting their business? Listen in to hear from those businesses and more on Hustleburg, a podcast about doing business in the ‘Burg.

Get on Hustleburg

Do you have a question about your small business? Or perhaps about how you can market your side hustle to get you out of your 9-5 and doing what you really love? Send us your question by visiting beyondyoursidehustle.com/podcastquestion, and listen for us to answer it in an upcoming episode.

Coming in January 2020, Hustleburg will be available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, our favorite, Castbox, or whatever you use to listen to your favorite podcasts.

Music in this preview by my friend, Rhymer Educator. You can listen to his latest album, as well as his most recent single, No Fear on Spotify, Tidal, iTunes, or wherever you listen to great music.

Thanks so much for listening, and we look forward to telling you how we do business in the ‘Burg.

Market Your Business The Way Jalen Hurts Plays

Sticking to your content and social media marketing strategy, even when you don’t see immediate results, leads you to build an authentic, caring, and long-lasting community.

Over the weekend, college football saw an awesome and unlikely comeback where the University of Oklahoma, led by Jalen Hurts at quarterback, overcame a 25-point deficit to defeat undefeated Baylor University, 34-31.

The outcome for the Oklahoma Sooners, on the road against a conference foe with something to prove, reminded me of how it feels when you embark on the challenge of marketing a new venture online. Their response to stay in the game, keep working their gameplan, and make the adjustments necessary to overcome a situation that would paralyze many other teams looks like what many side hustlers who use internet marketing to build their business face.

At the beginning of your internet marketing journey, you’re starting from scratch. You have no content and no community, the two things you need to be effective in marketing your business or venture. In addition to starting at zero, you see your industry peers, prolific marketers, and the latest internet-famous meme zooming ahead with their established brand and content. It can be discouraging to see them share their successes, their engagement online increase, and the results from their past efforts as you create the “starter” content in the pre-launch days and early in your marketing calendar.

Build Your Community

As you build your community and add to your initial content, you don’t feel glamorous because you don’t even get the satisfaction of seeing small wins or momentum. Like in Saturday’s game, the competition seems to be unstoppable and out of reach, going up by 25. Everything they do is golden, while you dwell in the inertia of the pre-launch activities.

Those early weeks and months feel like an eternity as you don’t see visible progress in the metrics of contacts added to your CRM, follower counts, or engagement online. Content and social media marketing isn’t something to expect an immediate gain from or to be an instant answer for your business. It should be a part of building the community that supports it, and communities take time and care to build to reach the sustainable and engaging direct access to what your customers think about you.

In business, we don’t play a finite game with a singular opponent, but our lives are filled with wins, losses, and the payoff of success. Sticking to your content and social media marketing strategy, even when you don’t see immediate results, leads you to build an authentic, caring, and long-lasting community. That community will be there to support you and to keep you in business long after you’ve hit “Enter.”

Hard Work and Resolve

As those who watched Saturday’s game witnessed, when hard work and resolve to stick to the plan meet, momentum builds. As it does, you see results in the “little things,” and eventually, you prevail.

Even when you feel like you’re down 28-3 as Oklahoma was early in the game, they persisted. As should you.

Why Aren’t You Using the Internet to Market Your Business?

Television? Radio? Billboards? Those are so yesterday. You can’t even measure their effect directly, so how would you even know if they are working? Why would you continue to pump money into the unknown abyss of their ineffectiveness?

Do you watch TV commercials? Or are you watching the content available to you via Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, etc? Even if you are watching television live as it airs, aren’t you picking up your phone, iPad, or laptop to monopolize your attention until the show comes back?

Do you listen to the radio in the car? I can’t remember the last time I drove without having a podcast, streaming music, or an audio-book playing. I couldn’t even tell you a single local radio station for the last two major metro areas I’ve lived.

Billboards require capturing attention to be effective. The next time you’re driving, take a look at the cars you pass on the road and those that pass you. The passengers nearly all hold the familiar pose. Head down, eyes locked on the screen in front of them. The kids are watching Frozen in the backseat for the 116th time, and the driver HOPEFULLY has his or her eyes on the road and isn’t engaged reading something on their phones or responding to their latest text. Who’s going to see your billboard?

Get Their Attention

Digital marketing, on the other hand… It’s 2019, and everyone, including your parents or grandparents, uses the internet in some capacity. The key here is understanding how to harness the power of it.

You have the ability to truly examine the return on investment for each ad you run, down to a granular level to examine your geographic, demographic, and psychographic impact. While your organic content for many platforms is somewhat “spray and pray” in regard to how it’s displayed, your paid advertising is very specific, down to a microscopic level.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the platforms outside of advertising, however. Your efforts there should be engaging and listening in nature. You have a FREE focus group that will freely tell you about your business. They will tell you what they love, so you can keep delivering in those areas, and they will tell you what they hate, so you can shore up a deficiency and invite them back to show them you care enough to fix it.

Tell More Stories

A very effective way to convey your message persuasively is to tell a story that offers a solution in action.

As we lead by example, we continue to demonstrate the principles we espouse.

By showing before we tell, we add credibility to our words.

When we listen, we understand the issues and outcomes important to those with whom we speak.

Now that we’ve demonstrated our principles, made ourselves credible, and understand the issues and outcomes, we can talk about our ideas.

It is very easy to jump to facts, figures, and studies to make the case for what we believe. Reason, logic, and philosophical principles are what likely grabbed our attention, but they are not particularly persuasive to those who are not yet on the same page in their thinking. So, how can we reach them?

Tell The Story

A very effective way to convey your message persuasively is to tell a story that offers a solution in action.

Telling stories helps connect the listener to details, important points, and outcomes that are not found in citing statistics and studies.

Think about the last time you went to an event where there was an in-depth Powerpoint presentation with lots of slides, filled with statistics, facts, and figures. You likely took copious notes to keep up with every last shred of data.

When you left the presentation, how much did you retain without those notes? And six months later? A year later? A decade later?

Very few adults are blessed with an eidetic memory, like Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, so recalling these details does not come naturally.

What’s something we all remember?

What We Remember

The stories we learned at a young age. Fables from Aesop, movies by Disney, and silly rhyming books by Dr. Seuss. Why do we remember, sometimes in amazing detail, something we heard, read, or watched twenty, thirty, forty or more years ago?

When did you last read or hear the story, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” one of Aesop’s fables?

If asked for a synopsis, we could easily give an accurate retelling of how the hare was beyond confident in his abilities to defeat the tortoise in a foot race. He was so confident that he sped off to an early lead and took a nap. When he awoke and hopped to the finish line, he found that the tortoise had beaten him by staying the course.

The lesson that we can all recite in unison? “Slow and steady wins the race.”

It’s probably been twenty years or more since I’ve heard that fable, but I remember what occurred due to the structure of the plot, characters, climax, and resolution involved in storytelling.

Twenty years ago, I would likely have been sitting in Chemistry class, but I don’t know that I could tell you what Avogadro’s number is or why it’s important, despite its repeated use.

If you’re interested in the science behind why storytelling is effective, here is an article about how stories activate our brains.

So, how many stories are you going to have in your repertoire?

Do What You Say You’ll Do

Carl Jung is quoted as saying, “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

What you do, or don’t do, is the foundation of your reputation to others. We’ve all heard that someone’s reputation precedes them, and a reputation can often tell others more about you than any words you may communicate. Shouldn’t you be a shining example for who and what we are?

Credibility

When we can’t live up to doing what we say we will do, we lose our credibility. It’s like putting a question mark at the end of every promise we make and every position we take. Would you really want to take a chance on losing that trust? We have many other things to overcome without having to rebuild credibility.

So, how can we make sure we live up to our reputation?

Reputation

First, don’t take on too much. Often, we see a void and we step up to fill it. As a former leader in the service industry, I realize that we often over promise and under deliver, but if we flip that, we can make sure we meet our commitments by setting reasonable expectations and wowing with our results. Switch to an “underpromise, overdeliver” approach and see the results of keeping things under control.

Next, honestly evaluate the level of effort or time necessary to do a good job meeting the commitments you make. Something may seem to be quick or easy on the surface, but it can really bite you when it’s more complex than you first thought. Being honest about what it will take, along with not taking on too much will help you to do what you say you’ll do.

Explain, Don’t Excuse

Finally, when you can’t make things happen on the timeline you’ve set, make sure you offer explanations, not excuses. Excuses are flimsy, and the real reason is often the better route, especially if it’s humbling.

Are you ready to do what you way you’ll do?