008: Social Media Strategy

In this seventh week of Blueprint to Breakthrough on Moneymaker Monday, Sarah Beth Herman reflects on her entrepreneurship journey, emphasizing the pitfalls of striving for perfection that can hinder financial success. Drawing from various personal experiences, she advises against delaying business launches, stressing the importance of visibility, consistency, and engagement in marketing. Sarah provides practical steps for a simplified social media strategy, including choosing a platform, planning content, and engaging like a CEO. The episode features an introduction to sales and business mentor Jillian Murphy, who will teach us this week how to use social media effectively for real business growth. Highlighting the community's achievements, the session aims to drive members towards meaningful action and success.

This podcast episode is exclusively for members and accountability partners of Blueprint to Breakthrough®. All content provided is for educational and motivational purposes only. Results may vary based on individual effort and application.

For more information and resources, visit www.sarahbethherman.com.

If you have any questions or need support, reach out through the cohort connection channel in Microsoft Teams. Let’s keep growing together!

Chapters

• 2:11 Perfectionism and Missed Opportunities
• 4:43 The Power of Taking Action
• 5:08 Marketing Then vs. Now
• 6:41 Community Wins & Success Stories
• 8:56 Simplifying Social Media Strategy
• 12:02 Upcoming Session with Jillian Murphy

Transcript

  📍   Welcome back to this week of moneymaker Monday. We are on episode seven, which means we are seven weeks in to blueprint to break through. It's got me thinking a lot about my own entrepreneurship journey. I've spent the better part of the last three decades building businesses.

Even when I didn't know I was actually building businesses. I remember thinking that I used to have everything perfect. That if I was going to do something, I was going to do it really, really, really, really, really amazing and then launch it so that I could be proud of me when other people showed interest.

I remember one time my daughter was 11 or 12 years old and she had taken a babysitting course and I wanted her to be able to be the best babysitter and get the most people that wanted her to babysit for them. And so I showed her that she just needed to present herself well online. And so I created an entire babysitting company for her called Lexi's Littles. 

And she had a Facebook page and people contacting her all the time in the town that we lived in. It was actually super adorable. That business lasted for about two months, if I'm lucky, two months, because she was done. She was over it. It wasn't her passion, but I was so proud of creating that.  I've had multiple nonprofits that had websites, sponsorship programs.

My husband and I, since 2007, we fed 3, 500 people by cooking food out of our own kitchen and feeding people on Thanksgiving. I remember my daughter. She caught on to how I used to do business, making everything just perfect.  She even created her own website and it was called all about bulldogs and she wanted everyone to be able to learn everything they could about bulldogs because we owned.

English bulldogs for a while. We had English bulldogs when she was younger. You see, I've learned over the years, creating multiple organizations over and over and over that waiting for everything to be perfect, feeling like it was 100 percent ready. I always spent more time doing that than if I would have just gotten it out and made the money sooner.

Like, I took so long to create something. before ever putting it out that I actually think I lost more money than I made in some of these ventures.

I think I even stopped myself from making more money at certain points because I was so obsessed with the perfection. I was so obsessed with how it had to look, what it had to be like. I think for me, when I was early on as an entrepreneur, I was so terrified of losing the money that I made from my nine to five.

That I could never just let myself be and do and create exactly what I wanted to do because I was so busy working for somebody else that I never just took the leap, jumped into what I knew I could make money doing because I had such a passion for it. If that's someone like you, if you've been putting off marketing or putting off launching or putting off doing what you know you should be doing, this is going to be an episode that will matter quite a bit.

If you think that if I advertise more or if I market more, then I'll have too much business and I can't handle all the business. Then you're not scalable yet. And I need you to go back and listen to the last five Moneymaker Monday calls. And I want you to shift your mindset.

By now, each of you should have real, tangible progress from this program. And if you don't, Go back to the last five episodes. Go watch some of our recorded episodes. Check in with yourself. Go back through Notion. Schedule a one on one with me. Let's get you caught up to where you need to be. You have an accountability partner in this program for a reason.

If you are an accountability partner listening to this episode right now, you should know exactly where your mentee is at. Where are they at with things? How are things going? Are they progressing forward? If you have an existing brand, how are you making sure that your brand is better than ever? How are you showing up to take one thing from each week to make yourself better?

The other day I was talking to someone and they're like, Hey, every day I just try to be 1 percent better because then by the end of the year I'll be 365 percent better than I was when I started. I mean, that sounds crazy to me, but also it's very real. So if every day since we started blueprint to breakthrough, you took the time to be 1 percent better, I think by now you'd be like 45 or 60 percent better than where you were when we started the program.

Let's talk about marketing for a minute. Marketing today looks a lot different than it did in the 80s and the 90s. I was born in the 80s and I didn't really do any marketing during that time, but I did a little bit of research and I think you guys know where I'm going with this. Even though I'm going to show you all of these ways that marketing has changed, the core of marketing hasn't changed.

Back then, businesses relied on yellow page ads. If you weren't in the book, you weren't getting calls. TV and radio commercials. If you could afford an ad spot, you were way far ahead of any other competitor you had. Billboards and direct mail. They were traditional ways to stay top of mind. Networking events and cold calling.

Now,  If you wanted business, you had to actively go out and get it. Today, our marketing modalities have changed. Social media is now one of our biggest tools. But it doesn't mean the fundamentals of marketing are any different. Visibility still matters. If no one sees you, they won't buy from you.

Consistency matters. The same way brands state in front of customers with ads, you have to show up in front of your audience regularly. Engagement matters. Just like business owners used to go to networking events. Today, you can network by showing up in the comments, direct messages, engaging with your audience online.

If you aren't using social media to market yet, or you aren't thinking about using social media to market like this, or seeing that this is how you are marketing, this is your chance to start doing it now. And if you're already there, are you using your marketing modalities intentionally? These are questions for you to think about.

Before we dive into strategy, I want to highlight some of the huge wins that we've heard from this community. And I want to share these because as you are learning this week, you need to think about the wins you have, maybe wins you haven't even shared with the group or with me personally, or on a one on one or through your wins and goals submissions.

Most of you know by now, but one of our members walked New York fashion week and got their first Getty image. Another member launched a teeth whitening business, turning their idea into reality. Another member finalized and launched an email list sign up, starting their journey to nurture their audience.

Another one of our members was literally at the New York stock exchange, ringing the bell for a humongous brand. This Tuesday. We will be having a full round table discussion. Where everyone gets to share their wins and their goals. Each person will have two to four minutes to talk about what they've accomplished and what they're focusing on next.

This is your time to celebrate, to refine your strategy, to get feedback from your peers. This week is about taking the commitments you made to yourself and putting them into action. What has Blueprint to Breakthrough look like for this group? Eight of our members have filed their trademarks after our 90 minute pop up session.

Thirteen podcast episodes have been recorded as a group. We've celebrated shifting from busy work to intentional needle moving action. Five of our members completed Take Out the Five Members. Twenty two brands now have SOPs built out for growth and delegation. Nineteen of our members finished reading Relentless to shift their mindset. 

14 of our members have started or finished the let them theory by Mel Robbins.  Two brand new podcasts were launched. 26 one on one coaching calls have been completed. We've developed a PR and marketing strategy that has gotten 20 brands in front of influencers and journalists. This is not just a program.

This is not just a, I might check in sometimes. This is real progress. This is a true group that is meant to move forward in momentum. If you aren't part of one of the statistics that I've read off, you can be. It is well within your reach to actually get yourself there.

Now is the time to use the momentum that our entire group has gotten and start showing the world what you are building. This week we're simplifying social media strategy and we're using it intentionally to drive real business and real results. So this week we're not going to overcomplicate it. I'm going to have you just start with a few simple steps.

One, pick your platform and your strategy. Is it Instagram? Focus on reels, stories, and DMs. Is it LinkedIn?  think about thoughtful leadership posts. And relationship based selling Facebook. You're going to get into groups and you're going to make personal connections. Pick one of those.

Number two, plan your content without over complicating it. Pick three to five core topics that define your brand. Map out your next seven days. Bullet points are plenty enough. Repurpose your content across multiple platforms  step three, engage like a CEO.  You're going to just spend 10 minutes a day engaging with your audience.

Comment and DM before you expect engagement back. That's it. We're not over complicating it. Fill out this list, write this all down and bring it to our session on Tuesday. Let's talk about where you're at. Are you selling like a business owner? Do you actually have a CEO perspective? I want you to ask yourself some questions. 

As someone lands on your page right now, would they know how to work with you? Are you just posting or are you leading your audience towards a sale? Does every post have a clear next step? Because here's the truth. If your content isn't making you money now or setting up sales for the future, then it's just noise.

Your power move for this week. I want you to audit your last 10 posts. Are they leading to action?  Send five DMs to create connections and make sure your offer is obvious and accessible. Your challenge this week is to share your commitment publicly. This week, I want you to record a quick story on Instagram or Facebook, sharing one thing you've learned this week in Blueprint to Breakthrough.

Tag me in it. Let your audience see how you are showing up for yourself and your business. What are you committing to this week? What action are you taking? Marketing is not just about what you do behind the scenes. It's about letting the world see the value that you bring. 

Your goal this week is to revamp your marketing and to get yourself in a posture of receiving what is meant for you. When you are authentic and how you post on your stories. In your direct messages when you send someone a message on your posts when you share what you're actually working on people are engaged They want to be part of what you have going on Sharing with them isn't just wow, they don't care what I'm doing.

Why would I be vulnerable like that? Why would I take the time to talk to somebody else? About what I'm doing. Why do they care? People want to know what you're up to And they do want to buy from you. They just need to know that you're moving. They need to know what you've got going on.

If you're just showing behind the scenes, how do they actually work with you? Do they know what your real everyday life is? Do they know that they can schedule a call with you? Do they know that they can actually work with you in some capacity and how to actually start doing that? What's one action that you're taking this week to step into your CEO mindset?

What's one way you're going to make your content work for your business? 

This week on Tuesday we're meeting live. And we're going to meet one of my friends, Jillian, Jillian Murphy. She is a master at all things, sales and social media conversions. One of the biggest pieces of this week's strategy is learning how to use social media for real business growth, not just engagement, but actual conversations.

And Jillian Murphy is going to be teaching all of this. If you don't know Jillian, she is a sales and business mentor with over 22 years of experience in sales and marketing. She scaled her business to six figures in just one year without running ads, building complicated funnels, or relying on paid traffic.

What makes her different is that she teaches people how to sell through direct conversations, build relationships online, and actually convert followers into clients.  She's giving us 45 minutes of pure strategy this week, followed by 15 minutes of a Q and A, and then a 30-minute round table discussion to break down wins, goals, and implementation.

She's going to be covering how to sell in DMs without feeling awkward, what your social media strategy needs to include for consistent sales, how to engage like a human instead of just posting and hoping for sales, why conversations convert and how to start them effectively, how to take control of your sales and marketing without a huge audience.

This isn't just a training session. It's actually a working session. So, by the end of it, you will have a step-by-step strategy to make your content work for you. a simple system for turning followers into customers and clarity on what you're missing in your social media strategy. She isn't just teaching how to post more.

She's going to show you how to make your social media a profitable part of your business.  So, before we get to Jillian session on Tuesday, I want you to write down three to five common questions you get about your business or industry.  And then I want you to think about where you are currently struggling with social media and sales.

And finally, come ready to take action. This session is where you will be working on your business in real time. This is your week to stop treating social media as a chore and start treating it as a sales tool.  It's not going to be perfect when you finish that call. And at the end of this week, it's not going to be perfect, but we are going to launch it.

You do not want to miss this next live session. I can guarantee you. It is a life changer, a game changer, and it's going to get you exactly where you need to go. And if you think it's not for you, that you don't need to sell in direct messages, you don't need to use social media to sell. The only reason anybody ever starts a business is because they want to do something every day that they love and be able to live off of doing that.

They don't want to be stuck in the grind. They want to do something that gives them passion, purpose, a reason to get up every single day and live the rest of their life, feeling like they've given back in a way that was meaningful. But we all have to make a living, right? So why not make a living doing something that you absolutely love?

And Jillian's gonna help us see exactly how that's possible. This week is your momentum week. This is your moment to go all in. You've already been doing the work to lay the foundation. Now let's show the world what you've built

We are going to get moving because I know that your goal is to live your life on purpose and do meaningful things. that give you a reason to keep showing up for 📍 all of those that you interact with. I'll see you guys on Tuesday.