This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

The post Protected: Medusa’s Resources for Private Clients appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

If you’re new here, welcome! I’m Eva Jannotta and I help experts—thought leaders, authors, speakers and academics—grow their online platform via LinkedIn, email, and content marketing.

TL;DR: LinkedIn’s algorithm changes all the time, so I recommend caution with how much you change your strategy to suit an algorithm’s whims. On the other hand, there are tweaks you can make to your LinkedIn strategy—such as putting posts in the comments and changing how you write posts—that will likely boost your reach and engagement. And good news: you can continue to use a scheduling tool, and you can stop using hashtags entirely!

Use the menu below to find the question you most want answered, and you’ll find a list of all my sources below. Now, on to the show:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About LinkedIn but Were Afraid to Ask (just kidding)

• Link in the post or comments?
• Do scheduled posts get less engagement on LinkedIn?
• Hashtags: are they dead?
• Just f***ing ask
• Pending: Engagement within the first hour?
• Pending: How important is video content?
• Sources

I also share my favorite social media scheduling tool (hint: MeetEdgar) and what to consider when choosing your LinkedIn content strategy. Let’s get right into it:

Links in the post or the comments (or no links at all)?

You’ve heard the rumors: LinkedIn’s algorithm throttles links in posts. Outbound links in posts hurt reach and engagement. Links in the comments are the way to go.

Is it true? (Yes.) Below I’ll get into why this makes sense, why I hate it, alternatives that still let you share valuable content, sources and more:

• Why discouraging post links makes business sense for LinkedIn
• Alternatives to link posts on LinkedIn
  • Link the comments
  • No links at all
  • Write-post-edit
• How to choose your LinkedIn content strategy

Why, LinkedIn, why?

Kicking link posts to the curb, algorithmically speaking, makes sense from LinkedIn’s perspective as a company. It better serves their bottom line to keep people on their website, seeing the features and seeing the ads. But I called this a rumor. Is it actually true, and how do we know?

YES.

I link to my sources at the end of this post but the conclusion is: multiple tests have shown that LinkedIn does punish posts with outbound links—and I have heard confirmation from a LinkedIn employee that this is true. That means that links to LinkedIn newsletters won’t be throttled; only links to other websites.

Frankly, I hate this. I want to learn from experts and share education I find valuable. The easiest and most convenient way to do both is via—you guessed it!—posts with links: they’re easy to click and easy to publish and don’t require special maneuvering. And, education and information from reputable media sources are important for vetting and quality-control.

HOWEVER, I (grudgingly) concede that there’s an upshot to this. If you focus on providing value in your post content (rather than teasing the value of content in an article on another site), you’re “serving people where they are” (see writing for more on this). That’s good, right?

Right. But still, it’s limiting: you can’t provide much depth in a 3000 character limit post, and again: articles published by reputable media are important.

Nonetheless, LinkedIn will never consult us on their algo decisions so here we are. What are your options to provide valuable, informative, and scroll-stopping content while avoiding link posts?

Alternatives to Link Posts on LinkedIn

1. Put the link in the comments

This is the most common workaround. The problem with it is that it’s a worse user experience. It’s frustrating to have to comb through comments to access the article everyone’s talking about. LinkedIn briefly allowed you to pin comments, which at least ensured it was easy to find the linky-comment, but not anymore.

And, if you’re visually impaired or have challenges with your motor skills, combing through comments to find the elusive link is tedious at best and prohibitive at worst. Per Axbom has a helpful piece with more about this and I recommend it: Why ”link in comments” is a bad idea for LinkedIn accessibility.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the algo starts punishing links in the comments eventually, too. In fact, Sangfroid Studio and SocialPilot state that you shouldn’t be the first person to comment on your own post.

They don’t provide evidence that commenting on your own content hurts reach, but it wouldn’t surprise me—if LinkedIn wants to encourage community engagement and discourage outbound links, punishing self-commenting a link would be a straightforward way to do so. Point is, don’t get too attached, and consider this next approach:

2. Don’t share links at all

Why I like this:

On one hand, it’s a great practice to give people the information they want without asking them to leave and read something else. It’s convenient for readers (and LinkedIn loves it too for bottom-line reasons). You can still provide valuable education (albeit shorter form) by summarizing points from an article, quoting and/or tagging the experts, even including the title of the original article so avid nerds can find and read it at length.

Think of your LinkedIn post as the CliffNotes, plus some networking best-practices. This link-independent format is also The One for riffing and storytelling posts, two post types that we’re investing in more heavily for clients in 2025.

Why I don’t like this:

Pardon me for being a snob but there’s a lot of unoriginal, marshmallow content on LinkedIn. Instead of interesting ideas and stories, I see a lot of mimicry and platitudes and “best practices” disguised as new thinking. Punishing link posts opens the door for MORE of this—in absence of being able to link to a good article, I suspect many will

1. panic and say nothing, depriving us of their contributions or
2. follow suit and share blasé nonsense (lookin’ at you, broetry).

My friend, video producer Andy Robinson, said it this way: “we need more credible experts online.” There are many ways to build credibility, and citing sources, related experts, and resources are involved. So while link-free content appeals to me on many levels, it does have limitations.

3. The “write-post-edit” method

This is where you publish your post sans link, wait for about 20 minutes, then add the link in. John Espirian wrote about it here, and notes:

“I don’t believe this works as effectively as it used to in 2020 and 2021. However, as visibility penalties for editing posts seem to have diminished in recent times, there may still be some value in this method. Note that editing a post to insert a link means that the post will not display the link thumbnail.”

How to choose your LinkedIn content strategy

Let me be clear about my bias: my priority is user experience over what “the algorithm” wants, and my outlook is that LinkedIn is a tool. We use the tool as a means to an end, but as soon as we start pandering to the tool, it’s using us. I think I’m right (obviously), but: I know my bias makes me resist making tweaks to our content strategy that will both provide a good user experience and make the algorithm happy.

Given that LinkedIn can change its algorithm any ol’ time without our consent, we are future-proofing our LinkedIn content strategy by:

• Sharing a variety of post types and flavors. I recommend 50-70% original content to 30-50% curated, and a mix of educational, storytelling, riffing, offer, and feature flavors. I also recommend experimenting with different mediums: text, video, imagery, carousels, and more. Variety helps keep your content engaging with the diverse array of people in your audience, which signals to LinkedIn that your content is popular and valuable.
• Creating posts that serve people with the content alone. We think of this as “synopsis” over “teaser” content. This provides value without people needing to go/click elsewhere and makes for longer posts which signals to the algorithm that folks are spending time on your work.
• Proactively commenting on other people’s work to grow and strengthen your network. It’s my opinion that comments you write yourself are more valuable than AI-generated ones, but that’s a topic for another blog post.
• Respond to comments on your own posts. Don’t ignore the people who engage with you!
• Use DMs, both text and voice memo, to privately grow and strengthen your network. See the Just F***ing Ask section for more.
• Don’t rely solely on LinkedIn for all your lead generation, network growth, audience growth, or really anything.

If you have questions about how any of this works and you’re curious about working with me, fill out our brief inquiry and we’ll talk.

Do scheduled posts get less engagement on LinkedIn?

Another rumor! You’ve probably heard it about social media in general: that scheduling posts using a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite hurts your reach and engagement, and the only way to avoid this is by posting manually in real-time (or, presumably, using LinkedIn’s native scheduling feature) which = inconvenient.

This *might* work for you if you…

• have an employee or contractor dedicated to social media (me neither), or
• do well with all spontaneity and no advanced-planning (me neither), or
• you’ve figured out a Goldilocks social media content calendar that is somehow user-friendly and flexible and easy to maintain (me neither, and I’ve never met another expert or thought leader for whom any of the above is true).

But is the rumor even true? No. Which is great news: There is no evidence that posts using a scheduling software get less engagement or reach on LinkedIn. Cue a deep sigh of relief.

But are there any caveats?? Why wouldn’t you use a social media scheduling tool? Let’s discuss:

• Your scheduling tool is the cake (you can add icing)
• Advice to ignore
• Why people think scheduling tools hurt reach
• The scheduling tool we use at Medusa Media

Your scheduling tool is the cake (and you can add icing!)

The benefits of social media scheduling tools are many (Tactycs has a good overview, plus what to consider if your engagement is low) and this is what I always say to clients:

“Attention goes where energy flows.”

Meaning: what’s great about having your social media consistently prescheduled is you don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to rely on elusive inspiration, you don’t wake up at 2 AM thinking oh-shit-I-haven’t-posted-in-three-weeks, you don’t have to cudgel your brains about what to say and how and when. AND, if and when you ARE inspired, if and when you have something you want to talk about in the moment, YOU CAN DO THAT TOO.

And you may find that those posts outperform many of your prescheduled ones—not because you didn’t use a scheduler, but because you spoke from the heart about something timely and topical and energized. Your audience will pick up on that and respond accordingly.

It’s both/and: have a schedule that lets you reap the benefits of consistency, and add icing to that cake when the spirit moves you.

Some advice you can ignore

“Good” marketing advice can be alienating for experts and thought leaders. You read it and it sounds wise, but it’s often difficult to actually DO, and it’s not clear if doing it will make a measurable difference. Case and point, Google offered me this advice when I was researching this section (bolded emphasis mine):

“Social media schedulers have provided remarkable convenience by allowing us to pre-plan and batch-process content, ensuring a consistent posting schedule. However, there’s a significant trade-off: visibility. Many social networks, including LinkedIn, have started deprioritizing link-based content, which tends to be the bulk of what we schedule through these tools…. That’s because the social media algorithms prioritize fresh, dynamic content that engages users in real-time. Social networks are also in the business of keeping people on their platform as long as possible, which videos and photos (and, in the case of LinkedIn, sheer text posts) help them do.

Living in the feed is essential for understanding what content is currently resonating. Algorithms favor content that garners immediate engagement, and being in the feed enables you to interact with other users and contribute to trending conversations in real-time. This daily engagement provides valuable insights into content types and formats that are currently performing well.”

“Living in the feed”!? No! Just no.

You don’t have to live in the feed to grow your audience, opportunities and authority on LinkedIn (see our Client Impact Reports or capabilities deck for examples of clients success that did not require “living” in any “feeds”).

And if you’re an expert or thought leader who’s writing a book or articles, teaching, consulting, and speaking, I can GAH-RON-TEE you don’t have the time or inclination to live in your feed, no matter how on-point it sounds as marketing advice.

Besides which, this marketing advice doesn’t offer any evidence that the claims are true. I came across a LOT of unsubstantiated claims about scheduling tools throttling reach—some heard it from so-and-so at such-and-such conference, but many didn’t offer even a whiff of a citation for the claim.

Next.

Why do people think scheduling tools hurt reach?

According to a 2020 article by Tim Hill of Social Status, it may be because as social media platforms have created their own scheduling function, it gives the impression they want to replace 3rd party scheduling tools—perhaps for the same reasons I mentioned above about why LinkedIn punishes outbound links.

But there’s no evidence that this is true, and social media platforms making it harder to publish content at all would also fly in the face of their business goals.

He said, she said, and your mileage may vary, but: until I see research-based evidence that there’s a difference in performance between natively-scheduled and 3rd-party-scheduled content, I’ll keep using a scheduling tool for all the additional convenience, archiving, planning, rearranging abilities it offers.

Speaking of social media scheduling tools, I use MeetEdgar

I like MeetEdgar* because of how it’s library and archive are organized, and—this is the clincher—because it has a “ReQueue” feature. This feature automatically recycles content, consistently re-sharing evergreen posts to get the most mileage out of the most enduring thought leadership.

We keep a sharp eye on all our clients’ queues to make sure all content is optimized before it goes out regardless, but this feature means we don’t have to re-schedule the same quality content again and again (which I used to do and it involved a lot of copying and pasting).

I also like that MeetEdgar automatically loads the images associated with links and lets you select the image to create an “image post” rather than a “link post.” This is handy when it comes to the link-in-the-comments thing: you can still use the picture associated with the link, which saves you from having to add an image manually, but add the link in later to make the algorithm happy.

*Also, MeetEdgar is woman-owned!

Hashtags on LinkedIn: do they help?

Short answer: probably not.

Long answer: I see a lot of posts on LinkedIn with hashtags sprinkled throughout or piles of hashtags below post text a la Instagram. Often, these hashtag piles include words already mentioned in the post itself. Great news! Using a term twice, once by itself and once with a hashtag, is redundant and unnecessary.

I learned this from the horse’s mouth, when alumna client Charlene Li invited me to a training with a LinkedIn Community Manager for Executive Voices, who said:

“LinkedIn’s search function searches all text in every LinkedIn posts. Adding a hashtag before a key term doesn’t make it more searchable on LinkedIn.”

In other words: if you use the word “leadership” in your LinkedIn post, it doesn’t help to add #Leadership. If you want to improve reach or searchability you could add hashtags of related terms that you didn’t use in the post, like #CSuite, #CEO, #Management, and more (Btw, you should always capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag for accessibility, and this is why.)

HOWEVER. According to research by Richard van der Blom in 2024, hashtags are dead. He writes on LinkedIn, “Over the past 8 months, hashtags have had zero impact on reach, and LinkedIn has quietly disabled many hashtag related features although there is still no official statement from LinkedIn itself.”

If I were a wagering woman, I’d say you could forgo hashtags entirely and focus on tried-and-true engagement tactics instead. My company will likely begin phasing out hashtags soon—while part of me would like to wait for an official statement from LinkedIn, the other part of me is pretty convinced.

Just F***ing Ask (a favorite engagement tactic)

You’re still here! Whether you’ve read this whole honking post or skipped right to this section, I’m glad you made it to my favorite engagement tactic, which I like to call: Just Fucking ASK (JFA).

• Why asking works
• Overcoming the awkwardness of asking
• Reframing the ask from “favor” to “relationship”
• How to start your JFA practice

Why asking for engagement works

There is no shortage of “hacks” and “tips and tricks” to “beat” the algorithm that get published every year. Some of them are handy and useful, but many are, in my humble, unrealistic for the busy authors, speakers, academics, and other experts I work with.

But one engagement tactic I will always standby is the most simple and most vulnerable: asking for it.

Not in a spammy way. Not too often. Not spaghetti-at-the-wall style. But thoughtfully and genuinely, while keeping the sanctity of your relationships in mind. Tom Critchlow explains this beautifully in his oft-read (by me) post on riffs:

“…the REAL MAGIC of the riff is deliberately sending it to people… This means that you’re guaranteed to have at least one person to send the post to in their DMs. And if it’s relevant for that one person, chances are you’ve made it interesting to 3-5 others too.”

When you want engagement, what’s a more thoughtful and selective way of asking for it than reaching out to 3-5 people you know well, and saying “hey, I just wrote this and it made me think of you for X and Y reasons. I’d love to hear what you think”?

The awkwardness of “just asking”

One downside to JFA is that it feels vulnerable. When you imagine doing it, it might bring up questions like: “what if I seem desperate or needy? What if they ignore me? What if they think I’m an upstart for asking?” One client put it this way:

“I felt awkward doing this and I’m not sure I saw a bump in engagement. It felt odd not sending personal messages and I can’t ask you to do that, because you’re not me. Besides, the people I know most about in terms of [my expertise] are often my clients and I would never ask them to share my stuff.”

I get that. It’s normal for this practice to feel awkward/uncomfortable/exposing. But I think it’s worth exploring before writing off the tactic entirely. And my client was right: personalized messages tend to be most effective. They’re not scalable, but that’s okay—“scale” isn’t the only measure of value. 

Now, let’s bring in some math: the semi-personalized messages I sent for this client’s newsletter got a 60% response rate. The resulting comments accounted for 20% of the comments on that newsletter—more if you only count “quality” comments. To me, those metrics are a green light.

Reframe JFA from “I need a favor” to “I thought of you”

What helps manage the vulnerability or awkwardness is to reframe what you’re doing. You’re not begging for engagement favors because you’re a pathetic loser, you’re sharing valuable, relevant work to a few hand-picked colleagues. Your attitude and the energy with which you JFA make a difference. Consider:

• “Hey I really need engagement on this, will you Like it and leave a comment real quick?” vs.
• “Hey Jenn, I just posted about the challenge academics face in building their personal brand, because it isn’t always encouraged by universities. It reminded me of our conversation on this exact topic, and I’d love to know if you have anything to add to what I wrote.”

See what I mean?

How to start your Just F***ing Ask practice:

If you’re curious to try this out, here’s what I recommend:

1. Start by writing out the names of 3-5 people your content makes you think of. Even if you never send them anything, discover what the practice of thinking about people feels like and engenders.
2. Trust yourself. Perhaps once you think of those names, some genuine enthusiasm for their insights will grow. And perhaps not! 
3. If it does, consider sending them a personalized DM. I recommend a private DM or email instead tagging them in a comment or even the post itself. That’s because by nature of being private, DMs and emails make the recipient feel individually sought-out. You making the effort to personally ask for their input is what strengthens your relationship.

I called JFA-ing an engagement tactic above, and yes sure. But it’s as much a relationship-building practice as it boosts engagement on your LinkedIn post. And isn’t that a big reason why we bother to use LinkedIn anyway?

How important is engagement within the first hour on LinkedIn?

How important is video content on LinkedIn?

These are two more FAQs about LinkedIn strategy that I’m happy to expound upon if it would be useful. I marked them as pending because, before I start writing answers (and thereby delay how soon I publish this epic) I wanted to make sure folks are interested. Hit reply on an email from me, send me a LinkedIn DM, or write me at evaj at medusamediagroup dot com to let me know if you’d like to hear my answers to these questions.

Sources

Links in the post or the comments?

• The LinkedIn employee’s confirmation came via a client; she heard it from a colleague whose LinkedIn presence is such that they have a direct contact at LinkedIn, 2024.
• Andrew P. Wheeler downloaded his data and did not find his link posts were being punished: “I don’t see that in my data at all.” 2024, LinkedIn posting and link promotion: impression vs reality
• “The link-in-comments posts performed better and had higher numbers from both an awareness and engagement perspective.” SproutSocial 2023, Sprout Tested: The answer to why you put links in the comments on LinkedIn
• “On average, posts without links got 6x more reach than posts with links.” Hootsuite 2021, Experiment: Do LinkedIn Posts With Links Get Less Engagement and Reach?
• How to Get People to Actually See Your LinkedIn Post, Sangfroid 2024. #4 suggests “don’t comment first”
• Beating the LinkedIn Algorithm in 2024: Expert Tips & Tricks, SocialPilot. #7 suggests “Don’t Comment on Your LinkedIn Post First”

Do scheduled posts get less engagement on LinkedIn?

• I couldn’t find recent research (post 2020) about this, and I’d love to. If you know of any, please send it my way! evaj at medusamedia group dot com
• “Within our data there was no conclusive evidence to suggest scheduling posts with Hootsuite or a 3rd party tool resulted in lower performance.” – Social Status 2020, Does Hootsuite or Buffer cause lower reach and engagement?
• “We did not find a significant difference in social media reach and engagement whether we posted through 3rd-party tools or natively to each network. As you might expect, some pieces of content performed better than others no matter how they were posted.” Buffer 2018, Do 3rd-Party Social Media Tools Negatively Affect Reach and Engagement? Our 200+ Post Experiment and Results
• This article has a good overview of social media scheduling benefits, plus what to consider if you think your engagement is low: Tactycs 2024, Do Scheduled Posts Get Less Engagement?

Are hashtag dead?

• #28 Update on Algorithm Insights 2024, Richard van der Blom on LinkedIn. You can download the full, 30-page report as well.

Just F***ing Ask

• Writing, Riffs & Relationships: Conversation is the unit of content by Tom Critchlow (many thanks to Sarah Eadie for sharing this with me)

The post LinkedIn Strategy FAQs for Experts: Links-in-comments, Scheduling, Hashtags, and the F-word appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

You’d be forgiven for saying, “no need to patronize me. Obviously the point is to make money.”

And you’d be right—sort of. It’s true that nobody’s creating her LinkedIn platform, email list, speaker portfolio, or book proposal for her health. The “point” of growing your audience and authority is to grow your career which is how you make your living. Right?

Right. Sort of.

TL;DR: though many experts are (understandably) reluctant to market themselves, thought leadership marketing is how experts move along the unknown –> known authority spectrum, which leads to more incoming (and well-paying) opportunities and a powerful asset at the negotiating table.

If You’re an Expert, Why Market?

My company helps women and nonbinary experts and thought leaders become household names through content, LinkedIn and email marketing. Yet experts rarely cite “make more money” as their primary reason for seeking out Medusa Media’s services. It’s usually a reason—often in the form of “earn higher speaking fees” or “receive more inbound inquiries” or “negotiate a bigger advance on my next book”—but not the first reason.

And many of these same folks have mixed feelings about marketing. They sense they should be marketing but are dragging their feet (even though not marketing leaves money and impact on the table).

So what’s going on? Why are some experts and thought leaders reluctant to market themselves? When they do invest in marketing their thought leadership, what do they want to get from it? Is thought leadership marketing different from other types? Let’s get into it:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Click on any of the links below to go directly to the sections that interest you:

• Why experts and thought leaders resist marketing
• What experts want from marketing
• Bar graph: challenges experts face in their marketing
  • Strategy
  • Audience growth
  • Time
  • Leads
  • Topics
  • Book launch prep
  • [BONUS] Embarrassment
• You might be ready for thought leadership marketing if…

Before we go on, let me be clear: when I talk about thought leadership marketing, I mean a type of content promotion and distribution that focuses on providing insights and a strong position in your unique voice and making an intellectual and emotional impact to position you as an authority so you can build power and wealth and drive social change. This can look like sparking and participating in relevant conversations, connecting with leaders in your field, and sharing research and insights and stories as a few examples.

Let me be clear again: sometimes I use “she/her” pronouns in this piece because after centuries of “he/him” being the default pronouns used to describe people, it’s valuable to use language that depicts women when talking about expertise. That said, the whole gender spectrum is welcome here. 

Why Experts Resist Marketing

Online marketing has an “ick” sheen that’s hard to polish off. Think:

• mass growth promises (“how I scaled to six figures in sixty minutes”),
• platitudes and non sequiturs (“I just ate a salad. Here’s what it taught me about thought leadership”), and, a personal least-favorite,
• prosperity gospel nonsense (“all you need to have an Instagrammable life is to change your money mindset/imposter syndrome/blah blah blah by joining my program”)

NO THANKS!

So you’d be forgiven (again) for thinking of marketing as self-serving, deliberately misleading, even inherently desperate or tacky or predatory—because sometimes it IS. Here’s how one woman put it:

“Us academics ‘tend’ to be a bit snobby about [marketing]. Maybe because of anti-capitalist sentiments in our liberal arts educations? Maybe because we can’t see beyond our own cushy salaried jobs? Maybe because we resist the idea of education as a ‘business’?” – Jenn Wicks

But whatever your sentiments about and experience with marketing (I frequently hear from clients about past social media marketers who disappointed them) hear me out:

Writing off marketing entirely is a disservice to experts and to marketing.

Fundamentally marketing is about spreading the word, spreading knowledge, and raising awareness. Marketing is the function that takes something from unknown to known whether that’s a product, service, cause, politician, person, or public good.

If you’re an expert or thought leader, you are somewhere on the unknown –> known authority spectrum. Say you’re a professor, author, researcher, writer, keynote speaker, consultant, or combination thereof. If you sell your knowledge in the form of consulting, speaking, books, or education, it follows that you could do that MORE if you were better known, right?

It’s a virtuous cycle: the more of a known authority you are, the more opportunities come to you and/or the more prestigious opportunities you qualify for, the more you take those opportunities, the more known you are, and on and on. 

Marketing your expertise—by distributing your work and thinking, making it clear what you do and how to hire you, building an intentional community, showing your skills and impact—accelerates the virtuous cycle, leading to more incoming (and well-paying) speaking gigs, sought-after leads, media opportunities, book deals, and more.

This is why obscurity is the enemy of women and nonbinary experts and thought leaders.

What Do Experts and Thought Leaders Want from Marketing?

I will not bury the lede: these are the challenges experts most frequently say they are facing when it comes to their thought leadership and marketing:

1. Strategy
2. Audience growth
3. Time
4. Leads
5. Topics
6. Book launch prep
7. [BONUS] Embarrassment

Some clients who come to us are excited and ready to market their expertise with more vim and vigor (and help from us)! But it’s common for clients to be some combination of reluctant, curious, and uncomfortable—and that’s totally normal and welcome, too.

When prospective experts and thought leaders reach out, the first thing we ask is for them to fill out this brief inquiry form, which gives us helpful info to guide a discovery call. One question is about the “greatest challenges you’re facing with your thought leadership”—in other words, where are you on the unknown –> known authority spectrum? What’s blocking your virtuous marketing cycle from working the way you want it to?

The answers to this question illuminate what experts and thought leaders ACTUALLY WANT, in their own words, from their thought leadership marketing. After this graph (and if you skipped the table of contents above to read this), I’ll unpack the most common answers, plus one not reflected on the graph but which comes up in client conversations (hint: it’s embarrassment):

Challenges experts face in their thought leadership marketing [Bar Graph]

1. “Creating a distribution [marketing] strategy”

Raise your hand if you (like me) have searched “difference between strategy and tactics” more than zero times . The words get used interchangeably but they are not the same: a strategy is an overall plan, and the tactics are the individual action steps in the plan.

Unsurprisingly, most experts and thought leaders need both when it comes to marketing their work and it’s the #1 cited reason clients want to work with us. That’s because a strategy answer that critical question: “What the heck should I do and say?” and its many sub-questions: “How should I say/do it? Where should I say/do it? How often? Who am I trying to connect with? In what ways? And importantly, why am I doing this? What do I want?”

Experts and thought leaders have a lot of valuable ideas to share but usually lack the systems that make sharing them (consistently and without it taking a bajillion hours) simple and effective. Besides, you didn’t become an expert because you love marketing or social media, so it’s understandable if you feel self-conscious and overwhelmed by online marketing strategy and technology. This is what prospective clients say to us when sharing their thought leadership challenges:

“Time and strategy for getting content out there, and building a following/mailing list. I’m also working on a book and trying to build interest and a following in a specific and slightly different topic.”

“Creating a strategy and tactics for engaging on LinkedIn around my upcoming book launch.”

“Too many ideas and obstacles executing (perfectionism, time, etc.); not sure what content is most strategic / best ROI”

Working with me and the Medusa Media Group team is one way to address these challenges.

2. “Growing my [LinkedIn] platform”

Clients want growth: of their audience (on LinkedIn in particular), of inbound inquiries, of engagement, email subscribers, and more. Why? For lots of reasons, but primarily to:

• reach more people and make more positive impact with their work
• enhance their brand and reputation (audience numbers are not everything, but you can’t tell me we don’t all judge books by their covers)
• become better-known authority figures, which leads to more opportunities.

If you’ll allow me to repeat myself:

The more known you are, the more opportunities come to you and/or the more prestigious opportunities you qualify for, the more you take those opportunities, the more known you are, and on and on. When you proactively grow your audience on LinkedIn and on your email list, you are cultivating a community of people in a relationship with you. That means more folks who will want to buy your book, recommend or hire you to speak and consult, enroll in your course, etc.

As for “why LinkedIn” it’s because it’s really the only professionally-focused social media and networking platform available. Our clients are usually highly-educated and experienced individuals who sell professional services—they sell B2B or B2(professional)C. If you’re an expert and you’re going to market anywhere on social media, LinkedIn makes the most sense for your expertise and audience.

PSST! If LinkedIn growth is a priority for you, might I recommend my Stop the Scroll: LinkedIn Content Plan for Experts workshop?

3. “Making time”

Remember that meme which read, “Beyoncé only has 24 hours in a day”? I found it inspiring at first (“Beyoncé exists in the same space-time continuum I do!”) until I realized it’s a lie: when you have the resources to hire teams to manage your work and life, you have way more than 24 hours to get things done.

The more their careers grow, the more experts and thought leaders need help. Experts are busy! They might be managing an academic or contract career, preparing for and traveling to keynotes and workshops, writing articles and books, managing a team, conducting research, and that’s just the professional side.

They recognize the importance of marketing themselves to keep the virtuous cycle moving, but marketing is its own function and skillset. It doesn’t make business sense for them to DIY it, nor to ignore it (because it holds back their growth and impact and can be embarrassing).

It does make business sense to hire someone with a proven track record of marketing thought leadership for experts (you can see our track record here). It saves you time and anguish because it’s more efficient and effective. I call it “worry transfer”—you no longer have to worry about staying in touch with your audience or sharing that podcast episode or promoting your book—that’s our job.

4. “I want more leads”

What does it take for someone to become a “lead,” i.e. a person who has shown interest in hiring your services? They have to know, understand, and trust both you as an individual, and the services you offer. Y’know what helps with this? You guessed it! Thought leadership marketing. 

Having an active and engaged LinkedIn helps generate leads. Having an active and engaged email list nurtures those leads. Creating unique, accessible and memorable content helps you do both. Marketing maintains your connection with your audience so that when they are ready to hire a speaker or coach or enroll in a program or recommend a book to their bookclub, you are the obvious choice.

(There are also a gazillion additional ways to generate leads. My business coach recommended having three: social media might be one, public speaking might be another, hosting or guesting on podcasts might be a third.)

5. “Generating thought leadership topics”

“My biggest challenges are content ideas and consistent execution.” And, “I have lots of thoughts but not sure if they would fall into the thought leadership category.” And, “I’m struggling and anxious about taking my many ideas and operationalizing them CONSISTENTLY.”

Sound familiar? This challenge is two-fold:

1. “Hydra-condition” is the state of having so many ideas, and seeing all the connections between them, that you get frozen with indecision. Having a thought partner (such as yours truly) helps bring focus and clarity to your ideas so they serve you and your audience.
2. “You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.” Experts are so close to their work that aspects of it seem obvious or boring or irrelevant. It helps to have a thought partner (me again) to help the expert see those aspects with new eyes and to tie them to what’s going on in the zeitgeist.

This became a running joke when author, speaker, advisor and coach Charlene Li was a client: during every call as we generated ideas for her LinkedIn livestream and email list she’d say, “when we started I was sure I had nothing to say!” In her testimonial she put it this way:

“I knew I needed a partner to share my thought leadership with excellence and consistency. Eva and her team were exactly that partner. I always looked forward to our meetings! I’d go in thinking I had no ideas, yet Eva always managed to get my creativity flowing, making me feel energized and confident.”

6. “I have a book launch coming—I want to be prepared”

Book launches are career catalysts, paving the way to greater authority in the marketplace, higher speaking fees, more inbound inquiries, media appearances and more. If you want to capitalize on such a pinnacle achievement it’s wise to build, in advance, the backend infrastructure that makes it easy to grow your audience and platform online. Furthermore, a strong LinkedIn presence, engaged email list, and warm network are assets at the negotiating table. 

We work with many authors, but the same logic applies to other big opportunities: TEDx Talks, launching a podcast, doing a pivot or rebrand. These momentous achievements are an excellent time to tap your network for support (people love supporting others, especially when you make it easy for them) and you’ll only improve the virtuous cycle if you have marketing infrastructure and support in place to leverage the big opportunity.

7. [Bonus] “I don’t want to embarrass myself”

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you suddenly realize you’re inappropriately dressed (or maybe not dressed at all)? The cringe is visceral, and feeling that cringe about your neglected LinkedIn or email list or blog is common. We often work with experts who, thanks to their research or a high-profile achievement, start to see a disconnect between the caliber of their work and the way they come across online. 

This challenge usually comes up in conversation, not in our inquiry form. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Feeling embarrassed about your online presence may not be something you’re keen to admit to a thought leader marketing advisor whom you barely know.

I’d love to say, “who cares? Your work speaks for itself!” That’s true to a degree, but if you’ll allow me to repeat myself again, everybody judges books by their covers. For better or worse, your “cover” is your online presence. Imagine someone gets two referrals to keynote their conference: one speaker has an active and engaged LinkedIn presence and the other hasn’t posted in 6 months. Why wouldn’t the conference organizer choose the speaker who can bring those assets to the table?

You might be ready for thought leadership marketing…

If the state of your LinkedIn makes you want to hide behind a tree.

If you have a book being published or you’re growing your speaker portfolio.

If you have plenty to say but no strategy to say it sustainably and effectively.

If you have a wealth of expert content gathering dust on your website or hard drive. 

If you want to grow your audience and network and engage in more meaningful conversations.

Those are strong signs that it might be time to market your expertise and thought leadership more intentionally. And I promise: doing so doesn’t have to mean talking about yourself constantly, adding a pile of work to your plate, or sharing anything that will give you a vulnerability hangover.

It also doesn’t have to mean recreating any wheels (many of our clients have a ton of material that can be repurposed for marketing) or doing anything that compromises your values or annoys the people in your community.

Marketing is fundamentally about spreading the word, spreading knowledge, and raising awareness—of you and your work, yes, but of others in your field, of opportunities that abound, of ideas and creative approaches and resources. It can be a tremendous force for doing good—and isn’t that what we’re all doing here?

To learn more about working with me, head to our trusty inquiry form or peep our capabilities deck .

The post If You’re an Expert, Why Market Yourself? appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

If I never hear these three words of advice again, it’s too soon. 

“Pick your niche” or “choose a niche” is some of the worst advice to befall women thought leaders — especially when we’re beginning to invest in and develop our body of thought leadership.

But if “choose a niche” is bad advice, then why is it pervasive?

Why does every marketer extol the virtues of niching?

Why do free PDFs, courses and workshops promise that they’ll help you pick the niche you “need” to get started? 

The problem with niching advice is that it’s nearly always incomplete, misleading and inappropriate. It causes overwhelm, mental freeze and confusion, and holds us back from trusting ourselves and voicing the strong opinions that will amplify our influence, build our exponential audience, and attract qualified leads. 

Why “Choose a Niche” Misleads (and Hurts) Women Thought Leaders

Once upon a time a coach helped me “pick my niche.” She asked me questions about my interests and what I cared about, and the difference I want to make in the world. 

Then, she “presented me” with my niche: social media marketer for sustainable clothing brands. 

Exciting, right?!

The only problem was that this niche made me profoundly uncomfortable. 

I knew nothing about selling products. Nothing about the fashion industry. While I cared about and was interested in sustainable fashion, I had zero experience. That wouldn’t necessarily disqualify me if I were excited to do that work…. 

But I wasn’t. I felt trapped. And then I felt bad, because my coach was a professional, and I’d answered her questions honestly. Why didn’t I feel the relief or excitement or clarity I’d been expecting?

Years later, I had a wholly different and deep satisfying experience when my niche came to ME.

Your niche is an evolution — not a divine intervention

It’s October, 2020. I’ve just spent ten months investing in and developing my thought leadership and experiencing its profound impacts. 

At first, I wrote about digital marketing. But I was more drawn to the creative process of thought leadership, the mindset and emotions of declaring bold opinions, and the way they build an exponential audience.

I’d been positioning myself as a “marketing lady for women entrepreneurs” for years. But in truth, marketing never felt like the right fit.

But it worked, for a while, as my proto-niche. It was an adequate starting place until a more heartfelt niche revealed itself: thought leadership consultant for women entrepreneurs.

This niche came to me slowly, unfolding over months. It made me nervous! Could I really abandon marketing? Could I really declare myself into something so specific?

I started SAYING my niche — trying it on. First, I told my coach. Then I told some colleagues. Next, I rewrote my bio and LinkedIn profile. And it felt really good, like a jacket that fits just right.  

Over the course of the following eighteen months (I want to underscore that “niching” is a long process, not something you check off your to-do list) I invested in a rebrand and in having my website completely rebuilt — which launched in February 2022. By that time, I’d refined my niche even further, to thought leadership trainer and advisor to women leaders.

(You can read more about this process in Case Study: Finding Your Niche with Eva Jannotta via my coach Eleanor Beaton of SAFI Media.)

The niche that was manufactured for me felt forced and wrong.

The niche that evolved organically over time felt exactly right. 

You Have What You Need to Create Thought Leadership – No Niche Required

It’s not that niching is bad. In fact, it’s a powerful communication tool to be explicit about what you do, and for whom. It’s not niching that’s bad, it’s niching advice — especially the three poison words, choose a niche. 

A niche is rarely something you whip out of a hat, or check off your to-do list, or that falls in your lap from divine inspiration. 

But the way niching advice is positioned, as though you can “pick” one like a flavor of ice cream, sets up a false and damaging expectation for women thought leaders: 

• It holds us back from getting started: I can’t create thought leadership until I pick my niche.
• It makes us feel broken: I can’t figure out what my niche is! What’s wrong with me?
• It keeps our thought leadership narrow and stifling: I can’t write about what piques my interest because it’s “outside my niche”

You do NOT need to “choose your niche” to create thought leadership.

Thought leadership is not the product of you having it all figured out. It’s the process by which you figure out what you believe and crucially, why. 

You already have what you need to be a thought leader, right now:

1. You already have a “proto-niche”

If you’re honest, you probably already have an idea of who you want to work with — even if it seems too broad to be a “real niche”: Women leaders. Solopreneurs. Introverts. Middle managers. Etc. 

It’s likely that you have something — or a lot of things — in common with this “proto-niche.” As the saying goes, “we teach what we need to learn,” and you want to work with people you can relate to because you’ve shared their experience. 

There’s nothing you need to “pick.” Rather, accept that what and who you’re drawn to is enough, and you don’t have to force yourself to be more specific. Then:

2. You can practice, starting now

With time and attention a refined, focused niche will emerge organically and make itself known to you — but not if you spend your time lollygagging. 

Thought leadership is a practice of discovering what you believe and communicating it. That means consistently identifying your opinions and sharing them with your audience. 

And you can’t do that while The Bachelorette is on. It takes focused action because it’s a commitment to yourself to trust and develop your thinking.

As you practice, notice the way it makes you feel: the parts that excite and entertain you; the feedback from your audience; the people who are attracted to your work and engage with it. 

THAT is the intelligence that gives rise to your unique niche.

3. Your niche will find you — again and again.

When you listen and pay attention — when you’re an avid student of yourself and your audience — your niche will make itself known. Like Ollivander says in Harry Potter, “the wand chooses the wizard” — or the niche chooses the woman thought leader and entrepreneur. 

Identifying your niche is not a one-and-done process. Your niche will evolve as you, your services, and the market change over time. That’s why “picking a niche” is forced and artificial. Niching is not an act of choosing but a revelation that will evolve as you do.

Your Niche WILL Come to You

When you commit with consistency to developing your magnetic thought leadership, a refined and focused niche will find you.

What you need to know today is this: You have everything you need to create magnetic thought leadership right now. You don’t have to wait for a niche.

You are enough. You’re qualified enough. Smart enough. Wise enough. Experienced enough. 

All you need is you: your trust and committed action and curiosity + a little time and patience = an unequivocally niched magnetic thought leader. 

Thought leadership Builds Your Exponential Audience 

Businesses thrive on relationships. And the most effective way to build highly engaged, eager-to-buy, and ready-to-refer relationships is through magnetic thought leadership.

In Exponential Audience, you’ll join an intimate group of women thought leaders (of all levels) to create thought leadership — that kind that attracts leads, clients and opportunities like a magnet. 

You’ll master the mental, emotional and practical skills you need to produce unignorable thought leadership for your business that makes you a woman of authority and influence.

No niche required. Just you and your formidable, creative, ready mind.

Join the priority notification list for Exponential Audience.

The post “Choose a Niche” is Terrible Advice for Women Thought Leaders appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

At least, it can feel dangerous. Publishing bold, provocative thought leadership invites the whole Internet to disagree with you. Dislike you. Disapprove of you! And this pushback triggers your stress response.

Coping with stress is a CRUCIAL skill for women thought leaders. And there is an undersung and hugely important coping mechanism available to women that we don’t use often enough: intentional microcommunities.

What’s an Intentional Microcommunity?

An microcommunity is an intimate group of peers with whom you can be safely open; who understand and relate to what you are going through; and who validate your experience.

What makes a microcommunity intentional is when it’s created and facilitated with the purpose of being open, supportive, and nurturing.

These communities are a powerful and underused coping mechanism for stress. They help us feel grounded, nourished and protected as we build our authority, push our comfort zones, and create our legacy.

I see an ENORMOUS lack of microcommunities available to women entrepreneurs and thought leaders. The Women Leaders’ Roundtable series I host is my solution to this dearth of microcommunities. I help women thought leaders connect in a special, intentional way.

What Research Says About Microcommunities for Women

Why are these communities so important for women thought leaders? Research shows that community is critical to regulating our stress response — particularly for how women cope with stress.

You’ve probably familiar with the three stress-response F-words — fight, flight, and freeze. You can Google your face off for how to manage the three F’s. Go ahead and do that! It will help you with your whole life.

But that’s not the whole story when it comes to how women cope with stress. Research by Shelley E. Taylor and colleagues shows that women have additional behavioral responses to stress, dubbed tend and befriend: engaging in protective, nurturing activities and relying on social networks that help to nurture and protect.

Tend and Befriend Communities are Hard to Find

Unfortunately, these nurturing and protective networks can be hard to find. Many adult women have a hard time making meaningful connections without the structure of school or hobbies. Furthermore, women entrepreneurs (and many people, post-global-pandemic) have the added challenge of working from home without coworkers.

It can be isolating. Lonely.

Sadly, many of the “solutions” available completely miss the mark of nourishing and protecting. They don’t offer the tend and befriend dynamic women most women desire. Networking events are often loud, crowded, or rushed. Zoom presentations with dozens of participants and a dizzying chat roll do not foster close connection. Some people have great experiences in online communities, but many (like me!) find Facebook/Slack/Mighty Networks groups busy, distracting, and challenging to navigate.

You’d think the Internet and social networks would make this easier, giving us geography-independent access to like-minded people. But the Internet can breed as much isolation, comparison-itis and separation as it can community.

Roundtables: a Microcommunity for Women Thought Leaders

To tend and befriend we must be able to talk safely and comfortably with others. Not shout, not recite our elevator pitch, not type, but talk.

When I think about networking, building community, and making new friends, I want quality, not quantity. I want intimacy and ease, not crowds, rushed agendas, or a pressure to impress.

I had never experienced this kind of microcommunity until I attended a Roundtable hosted by my colleague, Isha. The invitation was to a 90 minute video conversation with a few other entrepreneurs, to share our successes, struggles, and connect with one another.

Ninety minutes? I thought. That’s a lot of time to spend time with people I might not like. But I trust Isha so I took a chance.

It was one of the most intimate, grounding, validating experiences I’ve had professionally.

Our conversation was open and meaningful. I felt deeply connected to the women on the call. The conversation reassured and inspired me, with enough structure that it never felt aimless or long-winded. The questions we took turns answering invited open sharing and intimacy.

I enjoyed it so much I started hosting my own roundtables. After a year of doing them, they are among the most rewarding experiences of my life, personally and professionally.

Something important happens in microcommunities. There is a chemistry that comes alive in a small group that is impossible to facilitate in a larger one.

Why? I’ve discovered three elements that make microcommunities nourishing and protective for women thought leaders. This is what’s missing from 99% of online communities for women and makes microcommunities so powerful:

3 Unique Characteristics of Intentional Microcommunities

1. Gentle Structure

There’s predictability and guidance with structure that makes you comfortable. The facilitator invites you to take turns answering questions, which relieves you of deciding what to say and when to say it.

Whether you’re introverted or extroverted, shy or outgoing, a talker or a listener, the structure ensures that everyone has equal time to speak and be heard. This makes the conversation equitable and relaxing.

It also leaves room for spontaneity! What I love in every Roundtable are the interesting tangents, skill sharing, and brainstorming that arises. Inevitably, every Roundtable conversation takes an unexpected and delightful turn.

2. Intimacy

I’ve never hosted a Roundtable with more than 5 participants (including yours truly). Ninety minutes shared among five people means that no one is rushed. There’s time for everyone to speak and for spontaneous conversations to take off.

The small group format and open-ended questions make the conversation intimate, even though most women have never met before. The questions start broad and become more personal to help everyone feel comfortable.

It doesn’t take more than openness and the right container to facilitate intimacy. We want to connect with each other. As Brené Brown put it, “Connection is why we’re here. It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. This is what it’s all about.”

3. Safety

Gentle structure and intimacy create safety. For tend-and-befriend to work, we must feel safe in each other’s presence to share what we’re going through and rely on each other for support and feedback. The glowing reviews from participants speak to how nourishing and enriching the microcommunity experience is:

• Thank you SO MUCH, Eva! I loved it so much. It was like a balm to my heart. – Angélique
• I’m the first to admit – especially as an INFJ – I don’t *love* any sort of networking. But you created such a safe space where we could all be open, and it led to amazing conversations and insights. – Tracie
• Thank you for creating such an authentic space for women. – Jasmine
• I want to appreciate this space and structure. I feel like I’ve received so much from listening and observing everyone, and observing the way you created this container. – Michelle
• I’ve never had this level of an intimate conversation about my business! I feel positive, energized, very grateful that I met the three of you today. – Suman
• OMGoodness Eva, it was amazing! I really enjoyed your process, your questions, the people you chose. I love making real connections with people and you’ve hit on something wonderful with this format! Thanks so much for including me. – Lena
• That…was…indescribable. THANK YOU! – Jaclyn

Microcommunities are a Powerful Resource for Women Thought Leaders (and they’re more accessible than you think)

Who would have thought that a microcommunity among strangers could have such a powerful effect? It turns out that to get the nourishing and protective benefits of tend-and-befriend, you don’t have to have a tight-knit group of best-girlfriend-fellow-thought-leaders at your fingertips.

While such a microcommunity is indeed meaningful, we can experience deep benefits from one-time conversations with new connections.

How incredible is that!?

By making such experiences part of our routine, we enrich our lives with reassurance and inspiration from our peers. We can regularly manage the stress of being a woman thought leader by making these conversations a priority.

And of course, measurable business impacts come out of growing our networks in an intentional, intimate way: speaking opportunities, email subscribers, client referrals, podcast speaking gigs, and more.

I urge you to seek out and commit to joining intentional microcommunities — or hosting your own. You can start by emailing me to join one of my Roundtables at hello @ medusamediagroup . com. It’s my favorite way to connect with other women thought leaders like you!

Special thanks to Amy Wright for edits. To learn more about my colleague Isha Cogborn’s work, visit her website. Image created by LinkedIn Sales Solutions via Unsplash.

The post THIS is What’s Missing from 99% of Online Communities for Women appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

I needed the pliers to unhook the p-trap so I could drain it and clean it out. I needed a specific tool for a specific reason.

It would be nonsensical if I started showing off the pliers by using them for cooking or yard work or cleaning. Yet that is exactly what happens with social media marketing.

We’re told we “need to be on social” to amplify our voice and influence and to build our businesses. Through a combo of FOMO (fear of missing out), shiny object syndrome, and downright confusion we obey. We open accounts on Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Clubhouse, Facebook, and more.

But WHY? What’s the reason? What result do we hope to get out of maintaining all those social media accounts?

Women Thought Leaders Need a New Social Media Philosophy

The majority of women thought leaders are using too many social media channels. Worse, we’re using them half-assedly, grudgingly, and uncertainly.

Like channel lock pliers wrench, social media is most effective when used as a tool.

The problem I see is when women thought leaders start thinking of social media as the work. We fall prey to its addictive, competitive design. We see other people’s posts and stories and feel like we have to keep up. It gets treated like its own end, rather than a means to an end.

That’s why I evangelize “social media monogamy:” using one network supremely effectively for specific reasons.

My concept of “social media monogamy” isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. Social media monogamy is a philosophy — a set of guiding principles for social media use for women thought leaders.

The principles of Social Media Monogamy (SMM) are:

1. To need a tool thou must be creating something. That is thy thought leadership work, and it comes before social media.
2. Use the tools thou enjoy, let go of the rest.
3. Thou shan’t dance to the tune of these tools. Thou use them for specific reasons.

Let that sink in. Social media is a tool you can choose to use to amplify your voice and influence. You’re an ambitious woman, you don’t have time for energy vampires. Rather than pandering to ever-changing algorithms, you use this tool for a reason and be done.

How Women Thought Leaders Practice Social Media Monogamy

How does this work in practice? How do Real, Live, Women Thought Leaders practice the philosophy of social media monogamy? Let’s look at some examples:

Eva Jannotta, thought leadership strategist and advisor for women

When I started practicing social media monogamy it was clear to me which network would deliver the best results in terms of networking and reaching prospective clients. Thankfully, it’s also the one I most enjoy using: LinkedIn.

But LinkedIn isn’t the only account I have. Here’s how I use each social media network I’m a member of:

• LinkedIn: lead generation, networking, social selling, marketing
• Twitter: occasionally for news and tweeting podcasts/writers
• Instagram: very occasionally for personal reasons, like DMs and resharing weightlifting stuff
• Facebook: deactivated
• YouTube: private client welcome videos and team training videos
• TikTok, Clubhouse, Pinterest, etc: I don’t use these tools.

I only use LinkedIn for public-facing thought leadership work. The rest I use for mostly personal reasons or privately (like YouTube).

Eleanor Beaton, business and leadership coach for women

My coach Eleanor Beaton runs a multi-million dollar business and has a full time team. Though a bigger company often = more tools, Eleanor and her team are equally strategic about why they use each social media network.

Eleanor and her company SAFI Media exemplify the soc-med-monog philosophy via the 80/20 principle:

• LinkedIn: 80% of their marketing efforts focus on LinkedIn, where Eleanor has the largest following and where her right-fit clients are most likely to be. As she put it, “where we believe we have the strong competitive advantage.”

20% of their effort is in the places they “need” to be because their clients are there (Facebook, Insta, etc). You could make the case — and I probably would — that they don’t need to be there, but SAFI Media has made the strategic decision to maintain a presence in those places:

• Twitter: gently share thought leadership content and commentary/perspectives
• Instagram: stay connected with clients, gently share thought leadership content
• Facebook: paid ads strategy, gently share thought leadership content
• YouTube: where podcast recordings and educational videos can be accessed
• TikTok, Clubhouse, Pinterest, etc: don’t use

Psst! If you haven’t listened to my podcast interview on Eleanor’s show, click here to listen. We talk about booty-shaking for Mark Zuckerberg (#never), social media monogamy, and how I run my popular Women Leaders’ Roundtable series.

Ruchika Tulshyan, diversity and inclusion strategist and author

Many of my clients exemplify the SMM philosophy — thanks in part to yours truly’s benevolent influence! — but I want to highlight my client Ruchika of Candour Global because she uses two social media networks for two excellent reasons:

• LinkedIn: Since Ruchika works B2B with organizations, LinkedIn is a powerful platform for sharing her thought leadership and growing her network.
• Twitter: Ruchika likes Twitter! Remember SMM philosophy principle #2? “Use the tools you enjoy.” If you like a tool, even if it’s not directly tied to your thought leadership practice or business, use it. Do what you enjoy. And although Twitter doesn’t have the “professional” reputation of LinkedIn, you can absolutely find clients there (I have!) and make powerful and strategic connections.

Social Media is Not the Work. This IS:

Neither Ruchika, Eleanor or I are “monogamists” in a strict sense. Rather, we use each social media platform for a deliberate purpose.

Because social media is not the work.

Social media is a tool. And to use a tool you must be creating something.

Creating your thought leadership is the work. Supporting your clients is the work. Building your team is the work. Thinking, speaking, writing, learning, podcasting, that is the work.

Speaking of the work, that’s what stepping into your thought leadership practice and building your platform is.

Thought leadership platform-building happens to be my specialty, particularly for thought leaders in the Women Helping Women Economy. If that piques your interest, here’s the next step to take:

My free 5 Pillars of Magnetic Thought Leadership course teaches you how to make your thought leadership incandescent and irresistible.

It’s brimming with exercises, examples, and insights to make your thought leadership as magnetic as ice water after a marathon.

Click here to join the free email course, 5magneticpillars.com

I’ll see you on the inside.

Image by Good Faces via Unsplash. For more on social media monogamy, read How Social Media Monogamy Saves Time, Cuts Distractions, and Makes Women Thought Leaders Stand Out 

The post The Social Media Philosophy for Ambitious Women Thought Leaders appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

Yes. You can be too authentic for your audience… if ‘authenticity’ means no-filter sharing.

Let me explain:

What Authenticity is and When it Crosses the Line

Authenticity: WTF is it? Authenticity is being the best-est, right-est, you. It’s that energizing and effortless feeling that comes when you’re with people who excite you or when you’re in the flow state of doing your zone-of-joy work.

It comes in different flavors — you can feel that flow in a conversation with your spouse, your parents, or your neighbor. But you bring different facets of your self to those situations, right? You can be your best-est, right-est you in any relationship, but what parts of yourself you share depend on your context.

Authenticity takes openness and vulnerability and a grounded connection with yourself. Think about someone singing with so much meaning it brings you to tears. That singer is not phoning it in.

But what if that singer broke into sobs in the middle of her solo?

That would be too much for the situation — the wrong flavor for the context. It would be uncomfortable for everyone. And this happens in thought leadership marketing too — particularly among women leaders.

“Vulnerability-Matching” is Not Authenticity

Everyone’s heard that women are from Venus and and blah blah blah. Gender binary generalizations make me roll my eyes, but… studies have shown that women want personal connection, rapport and trust when making decisions for their businesses.

Women know this intuitively and we see it reflected all around us in online marketing. How many Instagram captions have you read that go like this, “I was in tears on my bathroom floor. This was it. Rock bottom. … And then I did XYZ and now I have a 7-figure business”?

The line between what feels authentic vs too much for this context comes down to your taste. Some women’s brands are more open than others, which helps them attract and impact their ideal customers.

The problem is, we see confessional marketing all around us and feel like we need to match it in order to be authentic. 

It happens in personal relationships too, like with my friend Jessie. Jessie is very open with me about her marriage to Shannon (whom I used to work with). She tells me what they fight about (sex, money and household roles, natch) and what annoys her the most about Shannon.

It’s curious to me how open Jessie is, because Shannon and I are close friends. (I flatter myself that it’s because I’m so easy and appealing to confide in, and Jessie can’t resist .)

But here’s what happens: when Jessie shares details about their marriage, I start sharing the same details about mine. I start vulnerability-matching! I want to match her level of openness by confiding the same way. But when I do I feel… exposed. Jessie doesn’t FORCE me to share, but humans are wired to fit in — and that makes me want to match her level of vulnerability.

Is your Mess an Authentic Message?

It would be no problem if I wanted to share that with Jessie or my audience. It’s not bad to share (sex, politics and religion are fair game if that’s what you want). Quite the opposite, you’ve probably heard the marketing advice to make your mess your message. It has a kernel of wisdom, a reminder that sharing your struggles is a powerful call to people who are experiencing the same thing and will feel validated and drawn by your openness.

But I’m reminded the iconic black quote tiles my client Ali Brown shared: sometimes your mess shouldn’t be your message. Especially if… you’re still a mess. 

Oversharing, transparency, and vulnerability-matching are not by default authenticity — but a lot of women think they are! Authenticity isn’t one thing, and if you’re not doing it right then you’re fake. No, authenticity is being your best-est, right-est YOU for your given audience, whether it’s your kids or your email subscribers.

Authenticity Needs Boundaries

You’re not competing for gold in the Confessional Olympics. You don’t have to share your struggles with money blocks or the abusive relationship you survived, just because she does.

• You get to decide where your line is. Where your boundaries are. What makes you feel like the best-est, right-est you.
• The difference between just enough sharing to make an impact and feel connected and oversharing is razor-thin. Listen carefully to yourself to find out where your line is. You may find it depends on the medium. Perhaps you’re much more open with your podcast audience than on social media.
• Share your scars, not your wounds. Most of us feel most safe sharing something we’ve struggled with — past tense. That’s not cheating. You’re not “fake” if you don’t divulge everything all the time (in fact having some mystery to you keeps people intrigued!). Privacy is important and you will serve your audience (and yourself) better when you can authentically share a struggle once you’ve earned wisdom from it.

You don’t have to be so vulnerable or truthful that you feel like you’re naked onstage in your most anxiety-driven nightmare. Being authentic in your marketing and thought leadership feels energizing and aligned, not forcefully exposed.

You’re not for everyone. Susie So-And-So’s Instagram is beautiful to look at, but that’s not your business. Your tone is different from hers. Your people are different from hers. And your people are waiting for you.

Now, if you’d like to take your authentic, not-overly-vulnerable thought leadership to the next level, may I introduce you to the 5 Magnetic Pillars of Thought Leadership?

The impact of thought leadership on lead generation and clients can’t be overstated: Over 80% of decision-makers say excellent thought leadership increases their respect, perception of capabilities, and trust in an organization. And 60% of those who are willing to pay a premium say it’s because the thought leadership of that organization demonstrates deep thinking and other virtues decision-makers value (source).

How can you make your thought leadership sing (without breaking into sobs)?

The 5 Pillars of Magnetic Thought Leadership.

It’s free, it’s just 5 lessons, and it’s got exercises, examples, and insights to make your thought leadership as magnetic as ice cold water after a marathon.

Click here to join the free email course, 5magneticpillars.com.

Image by Thought Catalogue. Thanks to my friend Julie Fogh for feedback on this article. Aren’t friends THE BEST? Check out The Authenticity Code (by Julie and her business partner) for more.

The post Can you be TOO Authentic in your Marketing and Thought Leadership? appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

Marketing advice drives me up the wall. There’s too much, it seldom offers context, and it paints with a brush the width of the Atlantic ocean.

Like this: be your authentic self.

But also this: say what your customers want to hear.

Which leaves women entrepreneurs confused and second-guessing themselves. Am I supposed to use my customers’ words or my own? How can I be authentic when I’m trying to sell? What do authentic marketing and thought leadership even feel like? 

These are great questions, and the answer is you don’t need to DO anything to be authentic — authentic is what you already are. Like taking off armor, it’s a matter of removing layers of marketing advice to let your true self come forth. When you do, your marketing effectiveness will skyrocket, and you’ll feel deeply connected and joyful at the same time.

Marketing Advice is Sabotaging Authenticity 

I belong to a coaching program for women entrepreneurs, and how the hell to authentically market comes up regularly. You know you’re supposed to be “authentic.” This is especially true if you work in the women helping women economy. Studies show that women prefer personal relationships, rapport and trust when making decisions for their businesses.

But you’re also supposed to speak to your customers’ pain points and use their words and phrases in your messaging so they feel as if you know them so well it’s like you read their journal.

Great. What?

Coach Eleanor put it this way:

“Know your customer not to say the right thing but to be the right you.“

At first blush, the word “right” begs questions about right-for-whom and perfectionism and fitting into the “right” mold. So think of authenticity as this: being the best-est, most right-est, you possible for you.

Authenticity is Being the Best-est, Right-est You

In your favorite relationships it’s easy, right? Like when you meet someone and feel as if you’ve known them your whole life. Or when you’re with people you really really enjoy, people who inspire you to laugh and think and wonder. They make you feel like your most vibrant, connected self.

Think about how effortless and energizing it is to just BE around them.

That is what authenticity feels like. You’re not trying to say what someone wants to hear. You’re not holding back or censoring yourself. Maybe you’re even opening up more than you do with family or other friends. There’s an additive energy to authentic relationships — they make you feel good.

They give you the space and safety to be your favorite you. 

A colleague in the coaching program is a trained journalist, and she used to get so nervous before reporting that she would want to vomit. And then she taught herself to imagine that she was reporting to her grandmother. That’s all — just explaining to her grandmother what was going on. And with the context of that relationship, she was able to bring her authentic self to television.

(Psst! Wondering if it’s possible to be TOO authentic?? I answer that question here.)

What Most Women Entrepreneurs Get Wrong about Authentic Marketing

Many women entrepreneurs hear the advice to know thy customer and interpret it as say what you think your customer wants to hear. You believe you have to use magic words to get their attention and make them understand that you solve their problems.

Then your thought leadership becomes mere mimicry because you’re not leading. Your marketing sounds like everyone else’s. And you feel shitty because you’re not connected with yourself and being you.

It’s like if, in another relationship, you acted like the person you think they want to know instead of your authentic self. People do this all the time — you and I probably have — and it can be a fine coping tool for awkward family dinners. But it’s a feeble marketing tool and a dismal thought leadership one. 

The One Thing You Must Do to Market Authentically

“But wait,” you’re thinking. “I have friends with whom I’m authentic. But that’s different than writing to my list or publishing a thought leadership article.” 

Actually, the only thing you need to do to market authentically is decide to be the best-est, right-est you. You can make the first move — you don’t need special permission. In fact by being authentic first you are granting permission to your audience to meet you where you are: in that effortless and energized space of authenticity.

Authenticity doesn’t spontaneously poof into existence. It grows as relationships evolve, but it starts with a decision. And when you are communicating with an audience, you must make that decision first. You get to choose yes, I’m going to tell them that. Or yes, I’m going to share that I love astrology or that I swear like a sailor. 

Tune in to how you feel when you’re communicating with your customers. Do you let yourself be silly? Do you use words and phrases you love? Do you disagree when you need to? Do you open up the way you would a beloved friend or grandmother?

Forget what you’re supposed to say. Let go of what you think your customers want to hear. What do you want to say? What do YOU want to hear? What makes you good? What would you say if you felt safe?

This is no listicle of Authentic Marketing Tactics. You’re up to your eyeballs in well-meant but confusing advice. Besides, you’re already authentic. 

I promise that choosing that effortless and energized place will catapult your return on marketing effort. Your thought leadership will attract adoring fans and repel haters (which are the only two signs you need to pay attention to).

Equally (or more) importantly, it will make you feel great. The good feels come when you’re connected to yourself, and when you’re connected with yourself you are magnetic to your audience.

Now, if you’d like to take your authentic, heartfelt thought leadership to the next level, may I introduce you to the 5 Magnetic Pillars of Thought Leadership?

The impact of thought leadership on lead generation and clients can’t be overstated: Over 80% of decision-makers say excellent thought leadership increases their respect, perception of capabilities, and trust in an organization. And 60% of those who are willing to pay a premium say it’s because the thought leadership of that organization demonstrates deep thinking and other virtues decision-makers value (source).

How can you make your thought leadership sing?

The 5 Pillars of Magnetic Thought Leadership.

It’s free, it’s just 5 lessons, and it’s got exercises, examples, and insights to make your thought leadership as magnetic as ice cold water after a marathon.

Click here to join the free email course, 5magneticpillars.com.

Image by CreateHER Stock. 

The post The Key to Authentic Marketing for Women Entrepreneurs (this is how authentic marketing actually FEELS) appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

How can I share my message from different angles? How can I connect with new clients and hook them through emotional connection and relevance?

It’s a question my colleague asked, and if you’re an entrepreneur or leader in the women helping women economy it’s a question you’ve had, too.

Not for the Coy of Heart

The question is actually two related questions: how do I share the same message from different angles? And how do I connect through emotion and relevance?

The answer lies in a five-step process I use in my own and my clients’ marketing. What you do is you:

1. make the first move (put aside any coy or wallflower tendencies),
2. show up repeatedly,
3. open up about yourself,
4. connect through stories, and
5. follow up.

This five-step process works flawlessly for sharing your message from different angles and connecting with new people, whether potential clients, collaboration partners, or even personal friends. Here’s what I mean:

Adulting 101: How to Make New Friends

I moved to Phoenix sight-unseen in 2017 after living in Maryland my entire life. When I got here I needed to make friends, ASAP.

So I went to events: an adult Girl Scout troop event, a green business event, a women’s networking event. And here’s what I did:

1. I made the first move: I introduced myself, asked for business cards, asked for phone numbers. Later, I made the first move by inviting my new acquaintances for coffee or happy hour.
2. I showed up repeatedly: I texted, emailed, connected on LinkedIn, attended gatherings they invited me to, and continued inviting them to hang out.
3. I opened up about myself: I shared that I was new to Phoenix, why I left Maryland, about my relationship with Steve, my family, my stage of business, what I was struggling with, what I was proud of, what I do for fun.
4. I told stories: this is part and parcel of opening up. You can’t connect without telling stories. Stories are the most basic form of human connection, going back through our ancestors to times when oral traditions and mythologies were what defined cultural groups and families. We are stories. Everything we experience is a story.
5. I followed up: if I liked my new friends (which I usually did!) I texted to ask for updates on what they’d shared, or to say how much I enjoyed spending time with them. Later, I would ask them to meet up again.

You’ve probably heard or thought this: “it’s hard to make friends as an adult!”

…No it’s not.

Making friends is easy. The problem is that most people are not comfortable making the first move (it’s too forward. No one will like me.), showing up repeatedly (I don’t want to nag anyone. Am I being too much?), opening up (we barely know each other — is this TMI?), telling stories (my life is boring), and following up (it’s too much. I don’t want to be too forward). 

Written out as a 5-step methodology makes it sound clinical, like a contrived or insincere to make friends. But if you zoom in on the way you do anything — play piano, cook, answer emails, write thought leadership, have sex — it all comes down to a series of steps. It was only when I analyzed how making friends came so easy to me that I realized I was following a process. It’s the same process I use to network and find new clients in my business.

Finding New Clients is Hard — Really?

The same skills I use to make friends are how you connect with prospective clients and hook them — or engage them in a relationship, if you like that better.

YOU must make the first move. YOU must be open emotionally and connect through sharing relevant stories that show people how much you have in common.

Many people are unwilling to make the first move. That’s why you hear complaints that it’s hard to make friends or find new clients. People want to show up on social media and have clients to fall into their laps like a deus ex machina. That’s not how it works. Do you want new clients? Go get them! It will set you apart from 90% of the rest of everyone who hopes and prays the clients will magically come to them.

Make the first move again, and again, and again.

You’re Not Looking for a Bridesmaid

After you make the first move again and again and again, be patient. Relationships take TIME to build. You wouldn’t meet someone and ask her to be your bridesmaid a week later.

You need to make the first move multiple times to gain the trust of someone new. Trust is built by showing up over and over again. By being emotionally open and sharing relevant stories again and again. Just like you don’t become best friends with someone the day you meet, a prospective client needs time to get to know you.

This isn’t true for businesses that sell products or super specific services. If I need a plumber, I don’t care how well I know them, I care that they can fix my toilet.

But for heart-centered entrepreneurs who offer personalized services — and many entrepreneurs in the women helping women economy have deeply personal brands — new people need to know YOU. They need to feel emotionally connected to YOU, and feel the relevance of what YOU do to their lives.

I’m already DOING THAT, you’re thinking. I’m beating a dead horse with the same message!

Three Practices to Ignite Connections with New Clients

You are a creative, dynamic, brilliant human who learns new things and has new experiences every day. There is no way you’ve wrung your message dry. No way that you’re done telling stories that hook people with emotion and relevancy.

But if it FEELS like you’re done, these practices are waiting for you:

1. Stories, stories, and more stories.

Every day challenge yourself to think of FIVE stories. They can be a line or a sentence, whatever it takes for you to remember. They can be personal, or the story of a friend or someone you read about.

For Level 2 of this exercise, find one of your core themes in each of your stories. Let’s say your core themes are leadership, resiliency, and reciprocity. Ask, where’s the leadership in this experience? There’s no right or wrong answer, there’s only your answer.

This exercise, and the story bank you will build by practicing it, will ensure you NEVER run out of angles to share your message, or powerful ways to connect with new people.

Theresa Robinson does this beautifully. She tells powerful, incisive stories on LinkedIn and she never wavers from her message.

2. Listen more deeply than you’ve listened in your life

You know that feeling when you read a piece of writing or listen to a podcast, of oh shit it’s like they read my journal!

To angle your message to be that relevant requires empathy, emotional openness, and… listening.

What are your people saying? What are they writing in their emails to you, in private groups, and on social media? What are their questions?

This is a bottomless well of relevant and emotionally resonant angles from which to tell stories and connect with people.

My coach Eleanor Beaton is great at this. Go to her website and you’ll start being retargeted in her with ads from her. It’s worth it: her copywriting is fantastic.

3. Revisit your contacts

In our lust for the new, we neglect the relationships that we have. When was the last time you combed through your LinkedIn contacts or email list and reached out personally to existing connections and former clients?

Do not underestimate the power of 1:1 reach outs. They make people feel cared for, remembered, and sought-after, and they’ll make YOU feel good, too.

Personal connections are our highest value currency in entrepreneurship and marketing. Not everyone agrees: in a world obsessed with unicorn startups and venture funding and mass appeal, being personally connected with an audience isn’t everyone’s focus.

For heart-centered service-providers, you’re missing a plethora of opportunities if you’re not revisiting existing relationships and keeping them current. (After all, the customer most likely to buy from you is the customer who’s already bought from you.)

Become Unignorable

This five step process will never go out of style. Connecting with resonance to new prospects will always aid your business. But there may come a point in your growth when you need to increase the volume of incoming clients. That’s when layering paid strategies on top of this process is important.

But no matter what paid strategy you add to your marketing, your ability to forge strong, fierce connections with new clients is commensurate with your willingness to make the first move, to show up, and open up, again and again. When you practice these five steps with diligence and honor, your people won’t be able to ignore you.

Now, what’s a reliable and powerful way to attract new clients so you can make the first move? Publishing magnetic thought leadership.

The business impact of thought leadership can’t be overstated: Over 80% of decision-makers say excellent thought leadership increases their respect, perception of capabilities, and trust in an organization. And 60% of those who are willing to pay a premium say it’s because the thought leadership of that organization demonstrates deep thinking and other virtues decision-makers value (source).

How can you make your thought leadership sing?

The 5 Pillars of Magnetic Thought Leadership.

It’s free, it won’t take 100 years to complete (it’s just 5 lessons!), and it’s got exercises, examples, and insights to make your thought leadership as magnetic as ice water after a marathon.

Click here to join the free email course, 5magneticpillars.com.

Image by Christina @ wocintechchat.com via Unsplash

The post A Fail-proof Process to Always Attract New Clients appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

You’re not broken if you avoid goal setting like COVID-19. Even if you’re a high-achieving business woman, and you know goals are how to make progress and increase your impact, and you tryyyy to set S.M.A.R.T. goals and blah blah blah, there’s nothing wrong with you.

But every entrepreneur and her grandmother seem to LOVE goal setting, so shunning it seems like a personal failing, right?

Goal Setting is Broken, Not You

The problem with goal setting for many high-achieving women is that conventional goal setting makes us feel trapped, overwhelmed, and even hopeless. This is especially true if you struggle with perfectionism and control (hi! Guilty!).

Listen, If you love goal setting and it motivates you, great. You can stop reading now. But if you don’t….

You’re not doomed and you’re not screwing yourself over. There’s a radical way to rethink and set goals so you always achieve them, without wanting to hide under your bed.

But first, WHY is goal setting repulsive?

When Goals Clobber You

When I was in 9th grade, my high school reopened for the first time in 30 years. It built up starting with freshmen, so my year never had upper classes.

As you can imagine, we had no chance against other schools in sports.

My field hockey team was routinely trounced by teams with older, stronger, more experienced players. Yet before every game my teammates would try to rally: we’re going to win this one! We have to win this!!!

I guess it was an attempt at positive psychology? But I always thought, this is asinine. Winning was an impossible goal, and no amount of psyching could change the reality that we were outmatched in every way. When we inevitably lost, everyone’s spirits plummeted. It was depressing.

Why Goal Setting is Broken

It took me years to realize that every time I thought about conventional goal setting, I felt like I was walking on to the hockey field.

Yet goal setting is put in a pedestal in business and entrepreneurship. Hashtag GoalDigger! So what’s my problem? Why did I avoid it?

I sat down to figure out why I hated conventional goal setting, and I discovered five issues:

1. Goals are arbitrary

From winning a high school hockey game to generating half a million in revenues, goals are made up. They don’t inherently matter. Plenty of the goals you “should” strive for, according to our culture — marriage, a white picket fence, 2.5 children, a 6-7 figure business, 10k Instagram followers, no wrinkles — might not be personally meaningful to you.

The tyranny of “shoulds” will make you feel like you’re supposed to care about these milestones. And when you don’t, or you don’t achieve them by the time you’re 30 or 40 or 50, there must be something wrong with you.

2. Goals create pressure

Everyone knows goals are supposed to be S.M.A.R.T.: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. The problem with specific and time-based is they create false urgency, pressuring you to achieve an arbitrary thing by an arbitrary time. WHY? Do you even care?? Deadlines are useful only if they make you feel motivated, not pressured.

3. What if you change your freakin’ mind?

When you set a goal, it becomes A THING, and specific, time-based things are by definition inflexible. But what if your circumstances or priorities change? Well, now you’re trapped. Do you “break your word” to your goals… especially if you’ve made them public? Does that mean you’re GIVING UP!? Or do you keep at the goals for the sake of finishing them? AUGH!

4. Goal setting sans planning is an epic fail

You know what’s easy and fun? Creating a goal. It’s like having an idea: enjoyable to think of and a lot of work to execute and plan.

I’ve done this so many times: set a goal (which was probably arbitrary and made me feel pressured and trapped) without making a plan. The problem is, “goal setting” sounds like doing ONE THING: setting a goal. It should actually be called goal-setting-and-breaking-down-and-planning-and-executing-one-tiny-step-at-a-time.

5. You don’t have control

Deciding you’re going to achieve a specific thing by a certain time implies that you have control over outcomes. And you don’t. None of us do. We have control over our efforts, but we can’t guarantee that our efforts will lead to achieving the made-up goal.

The Goal Setting Problem that Rules Them All

If you’re wise to how fear and the mind work, this dawned on you already: goals are scary AF. The Biggest Problem with goals-setting is what you’re afraid of. What if you fail? What if you succeed? Are you worthy? Do you deserve it?

How to work with and love your fear (note: fearlessness is not a thing) is beyond the scope of this article, but I’d be remiss not to mention it. I recommend the work of my client Tracy Litt for more on this topic.

Goals not your Bag? You’re Not Doomed

Even as you learn to love your fear, conventional goal setting might not be your bag. There’s nothing wrong with you.

Our rigid obsession with goal setting is closely tied to our white, patriarchal, Christian culture — no wonder it doesn’t appeal to everyone. Think about our cultural heritage in the west: time is money and idle hands are the devil’s workshop and our false association of success with worthiness.

In fact, goal setting became an area of study and theory only within the last 100 years, pioneered by (you guessed it) two white men. It’s not the only way to get things done. What studies will Black, Indigenous, and queer women perform in the next century, that will offer new paradigms for how to progress and achieve and make impact?

In the meantime… goal setting CAN be a useful tool, and you can use it without feeling like garbage. They can help you focus, get clarity, and take action. The key is to reframe goals as emotional, detached, and flexible. Here’s how:

3 Radical Ways to Rethink and Set Goals You Love

Make them emotional

Let’s say your goal is to generate a million dollars in revenue this year. WHY is that goal important to you? Your reasons might be, to practice more philanthropist, hire an employee, be financially secure, bragging rights, or qualify to join a coaching program.

How do you think that WHY, that reason, will make you FEEL? It might be generous, supportive, like a mentor, safe, worthy, proud.

What you truly want is the emotion you think the goal will give you. But you don’t actually need $1M to feel generous, supportive, mentoring, safe, worthy, or proud. You can cultivate the emotion as you reach for higher revenues, ensuring that you feel good no matter the number on your P&L.

If you don’t break a million in revenues, you can have the feeling anyway, and then that specific (and ultimately arbitrary) goal isn’t holding you hostage. It becomes the icing on the cake of how you feel.

Effort over outcome

Earlier we talked about control: you can’t control what happens. You can put forth your best effort, but there’s no guarantee your efforts will lead to a specific outcome.

That’s why I now set goals around what I can do, not what I hope to get. It ensures that I always achieve something, whether or not it’s what I expected. And I can’t be disappointed in the results, because my focus was on effort. Whatever my outcome is icing on the cake of my efforts.

Set multiple or stacked goals

I’m a weightlifter, and for every strength-building period my coach and I select five goals. Normally that would make me break out in hives, but here’s the catch: we assume I will only achieve 2-3.

I like this because “failure” is built in. The goals are purposefully almost impossible, but the point is to make an effort and progress — not reach every goal. The goals I do reach end up being a fun surprise, and in the meantime I get stronger and more confident overall. The goal is to not reach all the goals. This is so soothing for a perfectionist!

It doesn’t trap me because it’s flexible. Plus, I know how I want to feel: strong, proud, capable (which I will feel no matter what, because even if I don’t reach the goals I will get closer to them).

I also like stacked goals, which work great for revenues. If your goal is to break a million, stacked goals are good, better best: good = $900,000; better = $1,00,000; best = $1,200,000. Good should be almost guaranteed achievable, which means that no matter where you fall between $900K and $1.2M, you’ve surpassed your first goal.

Yes You Can

As I’ve opened up about my goal setting allergies, I’ve heard many women say “me too!” I’m not the only entrepreneur with a conventional-goal-setting allergy and neither are you.

If you feel like You’re The Problem because you dislike goal setting, I promise that admitting goals’ shortcoming and rethinking how you set goals will ensure you achieve ones you care about.

Where many women entrepreneurs get stuck with goal setting is marketing. Marketing is a huge topic with a zillion shoulds everywhere you look online. It can feel like rubbing your forehead against a zester to figure out how to market strategically, sincerely, and effectively when all you really want to do is work on your actual business.

If that sounds familiar, let’s connect for a Discovery Session. We can talk marketing strategy that feels targeted, effective and authentic to you and your new, unconventional goals.

We’ll map out how to boost your engagement, build your network, and attract new opportunities like a magnet. It’s free and it’s fun. Click here now to complete a brief form, and my team will be in touch to set up your Discovery Session!

The post You’re not Broken if Goal Setting Makes Your Skin Crawl appeared first on Medusa Media Group.