Live Q&A Roundup: Tips for Content Creators
Thanks fo everyone who joined me for a live Q&A on June 6th at 1pm eastern. We discussed topics from my recent workshop on social media and answered questions about that and Squarespace websites.
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In this live Q&A session, held on June 6, I went into several key topics relevant to content creators. This session covered insights from my recent social media workshop, discussed various features of Squarespace, and explored strategies for building a strong online presence.
Here’s a detailed roundup of the discussions.
Table of Contents
Finding Your Authentic Voice in Social Media
Understanding your authentic voice is crucial. Many people find it confusing until they do the actual work to figure out who they are. You need to dig into your background and life story, and put it out on paper. Knowing this makes it easier to create content and be confident in your story.
A major part of my social media workshop focused on understanding who you are and how your life has influenced you. This involves introspection and acknowledging both good and bad experiences. Exercises in the workshop, such as creating a timeline of your life, help in understanding yourself better. This makes it easier to put yourself out there with confidence.
The Courses feature on Squarespace is one of the many tools they have available, built into your website, for selling your content effectively.
Leveraging Squarespace for Courses & Selling
Squarespace has a feature that allows you to host courses directly on your website. This integration keeps everything in one place, avoiding the need to send visitors to another site. This is beneficial because it prevents distractions and keeps your audience on your site.
Squarespace also offers an online store feature. This integration allows you to have your shop, email marketing, and scheduling all in one place. You can use Acuity scheduling, which is owned by Squarespace, for booking calls or services. The platform's integration of email marketing helps maintain a consistent color palette and fonts, making it easy to link to various parts of your site.
Facebook Ads for Local Businesses
For local businesses, Facebook ads can be very effective. Boosting a post is different from creating a targeted ad. Boosting simply shows your post to more people, while a targeted ad reaches a specific audience. To be effective, you need to tailor your ads to your ideal customer.
For example, a local yoga studio can target women over 40 with an interest in wellness within a 20-mile radius. Facebook has extensive data, making it possible to run highly targeted ads. However, it’s important to do a lot of work first to understand your audience and create ads that are specific to them.
Content Creation with ChatGPT
Using ChatGPT helps in getting ideas out and organizing them. Open the ChatGPT app, click the headphone icon, and start talking about your topic. If ChatGPT gets too wordy, tell it to just listen. Once done, ask for a brief summary in bullet points. This information is then accessible on your laptop or desktop for reference.
ChatGPT assists in continuing the conversation with more intention and breaking down ideas further. This process helps in managing the flow of ideas and creating structured content.
Connecting Social Media to Your Website
Integrating social media with your website is essential for sustained growth online. Your website should be the hub, and all social media platforms should link back to it. This ensures that all your content is in one place and easily accessible.
When building an audience on social media, it's important to create posts for your ideal audience, not just your existing followers. Make sure that all the important information is on your website to avoid making people search for it. This approach helps in keeping your audience engaged and informed.
Answering Audience Questions
During the Q&A, various questions were addressed. One question was about whether you need to know how to code to use Squarespace. The answer is no, as it’s a drag-and-drop builder, but you can add custom CSS and HTML code if you want to.
Another question was about Facebook ads. I discussed that Facebook ads are worth it for local businesses if done correctly. Boosting a post is less effective than creating a targeted ad campaign.
Links:
Social Media for Makers & Creators Workshop – $40 one-time payment
Squarespace – sell courses, have an online store, send email campaigns, add online booking, and so much more to monetize your content.
Facebook Ads – a great resource for understanding Facebook Ads
The tools I chose for Emily’s site were to give her an affordable but comprehensive start to her business presence and website. Making the website easy for clients to use while also taking the workload of booking out of Emily’s hands, makes for the perfect combination for small, service-based businesses on a budget.
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