Are you putting all your eggs in the social media basket? In today's eye-opening discussion, we reveal the hidden dangers of relying solely on social media for engagement and the importance of diversifying your online presence. From the addictive nature of social media to the sneaky tactics used to keep us scrolling, learn how to protect your mental health and manage your time efficiently while still using these platforms for business success.
Discover how Pinterest can be a powerful search engine that drives traffic to your podcast and website, and get a sneak peek into our effective Pinterest strategy. We also delve into the world of Instagram, sharing tips on identifying your motivations and maximizing your reach through tools like Tailwind. Don't let your business be at the mercy of ever-changing social media algorithms - tune in to learn how diversifying your marketing efforts can help you stay connected with your audience and keep your business thriving no matter what comes your way.
Transcript (generated automatically)
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Vivian Claire podcast. I am beyond excited that you are here. You guys know how it is okay, life is busy, but you're taking the time to listen and vibe with me, so I absolutely love that and I appreciate you more than you know. But this week's episode is juicy because, okay now, people have said to me in the past like Claire, you do hate social media, and I don't.
Okay, because if you follow me on social media, you see me out in these social media streets Like I really really do love it, but I don't think it's a tool that we should use for our business. That should be the only thing we bank on. I think that is a really, really dangerous strategy. I also do think that not even think okay, i know that social media is addictive and it can also be a place where we can get in our heads. Okay, we can start comparing ourselves to others And listen. I'm not immune to this. I find myself; because I am on social media quite a bit, I will find myself going down that path of self-doubt and criticizing and like, oh well, their content's really hitting, i do get in those spaces. So I think with social media. We need to be aware of that, and if you are solely building your business in social media, like that is a heavy burden to bear. I think it is a tool, i think it's fun, i think it's a great way to make connections with people.
And I'd be lying on here if I didn't say some of my opportunities have come from social media, especially because I am so face forward. People can really see my vibe. I don't shy away from video, which obviously is great for social media, but I really, over the past four, five months, have been changing up my strategy and the way that I do things, and I did find myself in a position where I was starting to rely a little bit on social media for engagement in my content. It wasn't I still have my email list Y'all know how much I love email and it is the biggest driver for sales in my business But connecting with my audience, I was really just using Instagram And I was like there's so many other ways out here, still online okay, still online but that we can be looking into to get engagement for our content. And not everybody knows this, because a lot of people do know me from Instagram, but obviously, I have the podcast you're listening to now, right, i have a blog, i have some YouTube videos. I'm heavy in the Pinterest game, which I want to talk about.
So having lots of different kinds of ways that people can connect with you is so important, And I really realized, like I'm going to talk about Pinterest, that it was such. It was I saying was it is such a big driver for traffic in my business to my actual website. Okay, through social media, I will find, yes, people do visit my website, but a lot of it from me and my business is connection. We're chatting it up; we're building relationship. You know, i'm talking with different brands about things like that. Like, i find social media really does that for me. And when I got in the space where I was like, okay, i post about my blog and people aren't clicking off onto my blog, right, I'm posting, say, about my course, and although there's email, i'm still like, yo, social media, I would still love people to buy through there, right, because it is a tool for our business. And I just found more and more. For me it was becoming more about building relationship and connection and awareness for my ability to be on video as opposed to people getting off social media and hitting those links are coming to visit my website.
And in business, we want people to get off social media to come to our business. Okay, I'm selling my courses on my website. You know I have my other ebooks and stuff on my website. That's where I would, you know, communicate business deals. I guess you could say, right. So if we have people, you know, building relationship with us but not actually clicking off the platform and we have to remember people literally sit around tables and talk about how addictive they can make social media, like that is part of the game, like that's what they are doing. They are sitting around, they are conspiring, they are like how do we keep people on the app as long as possible and never have them leave is a trap. It's great, but we do really have to have a mental space around how much we are using it, how much we are indulging in it. Okay, so let me start with what I'm doing for my mental health and social media, because I do spend time on it, I love it, but you know, you know it can get a little bit crazy, and so these are some tips and I hope that they help you too, and sometimes I feel like in business, we don't even realize that we are deeper in social media than we need to be, because we have to be on it for our business.
As much as this episode is about building outside of social media, it's still something that we have to be on. Okay, it's almost like a credibility check for your business, right? that's the thing people check first. So some things that I am doing, i unfollowed accounts that make me upset. Okay, there are accounts out there and honestly, they are not doing anything to anybody, but it's not content that I want to consume. They have their ideal person for their content. I'm not their ideal person and when they show up in my feed and I see it, i'm like this. This just makes me not happy, like it's not content that I want to consume and it could be like content about spiders. I don't like spiders. Okay, oh, actually you know what little sidebar, because you know I like to do it on the podcast. Last summer I was outside and I was opening the mesh on my gazebo and the biggest spider I've ever seen, like in Canada. So I have seen a tarantula before at like a zoo party, but I have never like just out in my backyard. This is the biggest spider I've seen.
And this thing fell on my chest like I screamed. My neighbor was in his backyard. He was like yo, are you okay? I'm like I'm okay, it was just a spider. No-transcript. You don't understand how big this spider was. Like you really don't know. Anyway, and then later we're like sitting in the backyard and on the outside of the gazebo there is that big ass spider, okay, on the gazebo, and my husband I'm like there it is, and he's like whoa, that's a really, really big spider. And I'm like I know, i know it's a big spider. We tried to look it up and figure out what kind of spider it was. We couldn't. So I'm here to tell the tale. But I'm just saying like if you live somewhere, i see those videos of Australia and shout out to Australians because y'all are really doing it up, because the spiders you guys get in your houses are just it's not for me, but example okay, clearly you can tell I don't like spiders, so why would I consume that content? So it's not necessarily that any content was bad or harming me, it's just I don't want to consume it. So we can do this with our business social media and our private social medias. What do you actually want to consume? Another thing that helped me with my social media and my mental health is I really tried to be genuine on the app. I really try to be the person that you see me.
If you met me in the street and you watch my video, you'd be like, okay, you're the same person, like, I really try for that, And that's something I've always done. But when I got into the space where I was like yo, social media is going to be the driver. It's not even being inauthentic; it's putting out things so that you can get likes and comments and views. So it's part of you. But maybe it's not that first thing that comes to your mind that you want to put out. You're like this is a great idea, I'm being me still, but it's not the topic I want to talk about. So we ended up putting it out because we know it's going to get attention. Once I stopped doing that, it felt so much better just to put out content that I wanted to. That, I believe, is going to help my audience, but it also feels good to me Like this is my business. My social media is an expression of who Claire Hooper is, and treating it in that manner has been really, really helpful. I heard this quote I think it was Mel Robbins, maybe, and she was like social media isn't necessarily for your friends or your clients and it's an expression of you, And when you act like that and be you, you're going to attract the right people. So that was important, also being trying to be genuine in my comments and my feedback. It is so easy to scroll the app, and we have so many accounts we have to keep up with Like I'm following, I think, maybe, like I want to say maybe a thousand people and people are following more people or less people.
It is impossible to keep up with that many accounts that you're following and put genuine comments, but I do try every day to go through my feed, even if you just spend five or 10 minutes and just write real comments, not just an emoji Sometimes well, you know what I don't want to lie. Sometimes an emoji is the appropriate answer, but try to write something real, like something that would get the person's attention, showing that you're really absorbing their content, you really like it. It's so much more than double tapping, really trying to take the time to be like yo, and if you are in social media in business, you know how hard it is to put out content. So just trying to be genuine on the app really also helped my mental health. It didn't feel so superficial, okay. Another thing. This is I'll be all the way real with you. It's a work in progress, but trying to log off at a certain time, telling myself, okay, this is my social media for the day. Because even if you get on and use it for business, it's easy to start scrolling right And seeing all the things, keeping up with all the events and stuff that's going on. So trying to set a time that you are going to get off the apps. Okay, and don't just close Instagram and hop on TikTok. Okay, like actually log out. And one of my friends had told me that she actually leaves her phone in another room in her house And I think that's really helpful too to have a log off time.
And even on the weekends sometimes I'll have like a weekend log off. You may have seen it If you follow me on Instagram. I'll just kind of post about it and be like yo, logging off for the weekend, that's it, and that feels so good to not have to worry about doing anything as far as scrolling my phone and my feed. So those are kind of some of the things that I've done to kind of help my mental health and just reconnect with why I have. Social media, as I said, is the expression of me, but it's also a tool for my business. It's not something that I should be living in and absorbing so much, and we are not immune to feeling excited about likes and views and comments because we put so much work into our content. It's very easy to only want to see those things. So if you're feeling that way, i encourage you to take a step back, reevaluate and be like okay, why am I even here? Why am I even doing what I'm doing right now? Okay, so at the beginning of the episode I kind of talked about how I'm trying to use some other drivers for my business, and a big one has been Pinterest. Now I'm just going to dive into this really surface level and quickly and kind of give you some things that I'm doing. I would like to expand on it when I have a full episode to do so.
So, with Pinterest, we think of Pinterest as social media all the time. Social, social, social media. It's not social media. It is a search engine. Why do we go to Pinterest? Because we want to look up cute fits for brunch, okay. We want to look up hairstyles. We want to bring a picture to our nail artist. We want to figure out how to do a DIY thing in our house. It is literally a curated Google. You have to think of it that way, And I never thought of it that way. And then I was like yo. It is like someone I heard on another podcast talking about it. I was like yo, it really is. Let me just look into Pinterest, because I never really got deep into Pinterest For myself. I would use it and I throw a one, two thing up, but I never took it seriously. So for the past two months I want to say I could go back and actually find the date, but I have been serious about Pinterest And it does take time. Straight up, I'm going to say some things. You're going to be like Claire damn Okay, that's a lot. I pin. About 20 pins a day Seems crazy. But there is this tool called Tailwind and you can use it and it helps you bulk schedule content for Pinterest. I believe they do Instagram too, but my Instagram is when inspiration strikes. Okay, straight up. I don't really have a specific Instagram strategy. Unless I'm launching, then I get into what I'm posting.
When I'm posting, if I'm going to be launching a program or I'm trying to sell something right, then I get strategic about it, but otherwise I'm just a spur of the moment. So Pinterest Yes, this Tailwind app And so I pin about 20 pins a day and I pin to different pieces of my content. So I'll pin to blog posts, i will pin to Instagram, i'll pin to the podcast, i'll pin to my courses, i'll pin to my freebies. So every day I kind of pick a new piece of content and I'm like, okay, i'm going to figure out and organize 20 pins to put up, and it has been a big driver. It's been a big driver to social media, for sure. I'm liking the results I'm seeing from social media. I feel like Pinterest is helping bring the right type of followers to me, like people who actually would enjoy my content, my ideal audience. But what I'm loving is the traffic it's bringing me to my podcast and to my website. Now, my podcast this is only my second episode recently, okay, but I was. I was ghost, okay, and we talked about that in the last episode, why I become so ghost with my podcast. But Pinterest was bringing people to old episodes. I was like yo, people are engaging with the content, like every week. I'm seeing my stats for my podcast downloads and I'm like, okay, like, is actually working. And if I check my website analytics, people are coming onto my blog and reading my content, and then they are signing up for my email list, which is obviously the cycle of life. Right, we want people to come to our website, we want them to sign up for our freebies and then be on our email list where we can market to them. Okay, that is a funnel. So actually I'm going to do another episode about funnels too.
There's just there's so much I want to say, and that's another thing about relying solely on social media. Our videos we have one one to one and a half minutes. There's not enough time to say everything we want. It's not a good option for long form content. Podcasts, blogs You know these are going to be places where you can actually say your whole message and share it with people, because Instagram, tiktok, it's fast, right? So I just wanted I know I want to do a full episode where we have the time to talk about exactly what I'm doing And I'm not going to gatekeep. I'm going to tell you all the tea, all the things that I'm using to make this Pinterest strategy work. But I really do think it's something important and something we should consider building, not just on social media, you know, having other forms of content, finding ways to bring people to that piece of your content. Because social is great. I love it. Okay, it's afforded me many, many opportunities and I enjoy doing it, like when I do videos for brands. I like doing it. You know, if I didn't like it, I wouldn't do it. I just think we should have other ways to reach our ideal audience, other ways to reach our customers, and we shouldn't be putting all of our eggs in one basket. As far as it goes and we do that with social It's very easy to get consumed all in and think this is the only way I'm going to build. You know, sometimes I'll talk to people. I'm often in the lash forums. I'll just go in and answer some questions for people And I see this all the time. People will be like yo, I have no clients. I've tried absolutely everything to get clients, I have no clients and I'll kind of come in and I'm like, okay, well, what have you tried? Well, I posted on Instagram and I ran a sale. You have not tried everything.
There are so many other ways and platforms that we can be talking about to build our business, build our clients, sell our courses, build our email list, get brand awareness out there. There really is a lot that we can be doing and it's not without work, like, for real. It is not without work. Sometimes I'm like yo, I'm really out here doing the most Like. There is a lot of things I'm doing, but you can multitask. Right. Right now, I'm recording this podcast and I'm also filming it. So, you know, am I going to put it on YouTube? I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll put on my website. I can link it from Pinterest. You know there's lots of options there. We can try to multitask, but I just want you to dig a little deeper, okay, and really think about what your motivations are with Instagram And I say Instagram a lot just because I that's like the social media platform I'm on, but social media in general. What are your intentions with it? What is it really doing for your business? Is it driving your business forward If it is amazing, but don't let that be the only thing. Like I said in my business, social media does drive business for me, especially when I'm working with brands, but it's not the only driver for my business. So social media went away. Tomorrow, or I post a reel and it gets, you know, 25 views. I'm not scared, I'm not nervous, because there's other ways to make it happen. So I hope that you guys have an incredible rest of your week and, as always, stay golden.