329: Social Media Strategy – Creating a Content Plan, Growing Your Following, and Diversifying Your Platforms with Andrea Balogun

This episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast is sponsored by our sister site, Clarity. Clarity is a powerful tool that allows you to organize, optimize, update your blog content, all in service of growth. It's a little bit hard to explain something like this on a podcast, so the best way to figure it out.

Is actually just to go over and.

Check it out at C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com Our food blog Principium has over 1600 recipes on the site. And that's a lot of content and there's a lot of opportunities. We've talked on the podcast before about this idea of juicing the orange. There's a lot of opportunities for us in that content to improve and to optimize, to get more growth, to get more traffic. And we've learned a lot about incredible, valuable blog post content since we started our blog in 2010 and what that looks like. And it's important for us to go back to those older posts and apply those learnings that we have to those older pieces of content. Things like adding nutrition information or optimizing alt text, making sure internal links are all optimize, no following links or adding video. Clarity is the tool that we're using to create campaigns around doing that. It not only helps you filter and understand your content by syncing with WordPress and Google Analytics, now a new feature that we just recently released, but it also allows you to then build campaigns off of those posts to say, hey, these are, you know, the 10, the hundred, the 500 pieces of content that I want to optimize around a certain area. So you already have great recipes. Clarity's kind of that additional layer, that strategy, the strategy consideration that you can wrap around your content to help you optimize and improve it. And all in the service of growth. That's what we're here about and that's why we exist. We want to help you and your company or your blog get a tiny.

Bit better every day.

Clarity is a way that we are doing that. Um, if you want to check it out, we are offering a plan that we call 25 forever for the first 500 people who sign up for Clarity, which you can do by going to clarity.com food you'll see a really simple kind of waiting list sign up page that you can join and then the Clarity team will follow up with you there, get you onboarded and explain a little bit about how the tool works. And we would love to have you. And the other thing that we're doing is There's a little slack group that you can be a part of that people are sharing feedback, ideas, insights that will help not only you, but also help shape the direction of the tool. So, again, that's clarity. C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com food if you want to check that out. And join the 25 Forever Early Access plan for Clarity. Thank you to Clarity for sponsoring this podcast. Hello and welcome to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Thanks for listening. This is Bjork Ostrom, and today we are talking with Andrea Baligan. She is a consultant. She focuses on helping people grow their social media following. But also, realistically, in the conversation that I had with her, it's not just about growing your following. It's around growing the impact, growing the thing that you are trying to do. And some people think that, that they just want to grow their followers, but.

Actually there's some strategy involved with that.

And we actually had a conversation with her about Pinch of Yam. What does that look like? How do we be intentional with the work that we're doing in social media? So it's not just growing our following, it's growing the thing that we want to be doing more of.

And she's going to be talking about.

Kind of from a consulting standpoint, how she works with clients and some of the success stories that she's seen with folks that she has worked with. Anytime we can have a conversation with somebody who works with a lot of different people in a specific niche, it's always really interesting because they were able to see some of the commonalities and.

Some of the things that happen on.

A recurring basis for people who have success and some of the insider kind of tips and tricks that we might not think about. We being people who are trying to do everything right. We're trying to blog and write and photograph and do lots of different things. But anytime we can have a touch point with an expert who focuses in one specific category, it's really exciting to be able to pull out some of the things that they know and see and opportunities that you can be aware of. So it's gonna be a great conversation and I think there'll be a lot of takeaways that you can have. So let's go ahead and jump in. Andrea, welcome to the podcast.

Good to have you here. Yeah. So I'm excited to talk to you because you were actually talking with Pinch of Yum Team recently and we're talking about Instagram strategy session. You know, you had a call and talk through that and interesting time in the world of Instagram and Facebook, which we're going to talk about in a little bit in that this week, Instagram went down, Facebook went down. And that presents a good opportunity to talk about some strategy around considerations with not putting all your eggs in one basket.

But before we do that, I want.

To hear a little bit about your story. Obviously, you talk about about this stuff a lot. That's the focus for your business. Consulting with creators, consulting with, you know, people who are trying to build a following. How is that something that you got into? Sure.

Originally I was actually an accountant and I did that for about 10 years. But I went back to school for marketing and spent a lot of time with the focus on the music industry because I worked at Sony. So I kind of as an accountant.

You worked at Sony?

Yes.

Okay. And then. And then coming out of that, you're like, wait, I don't like doing this. I would be interested in marketing. Is that kind of the general idea?

Exactly. I am. You know, part of my background is still that analysis with accounting, you know, looking at numbers. And so I kind of like move that towards the marketing side, marketing side in terms of analytics and problem solving and which is a lot of what marketing is. So I think it's just a little more creative than accounting.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so that's how I got.

Started to have a position in accounting and then to realize, wait, this isn't. This isn't what I want to be. And to like, hit the reset button to go back and start it over again.

Yeah, a little bit. Because I think, you know, getting into accounting, a lot of people think it's just numbers, but it is a lot of problem solving. So I did get that feeling of like, I am doing something, but I think the marketing piece was about helping or helping people, you know, solve the problems for whatever their business was. And so I think I felt more fulfilled. And so it was kind of like an easy. An easy pivot.

Yeah.

But, you know, I stayed in, you know, my nine to five and then just created my company along the side until almost a year ago. And I only do this now. So.

Yeah, can you talk about that? Because that's a transition that I think is hard to pull off, which is nine to five, building a side hustle and then transitioning that side hustle into the main hustle. And you're close enough in. In having done it that you can still remember it like, yeah, now for us, it's far enough away where it kind of becomes mythology and it's like, what was that actually like when we made that transition? You kind of tell the story enough where it's like, is that still exactly what it was like?

Right.

But for you, like, you, it was. It was during the pandemic then that you made the transition. I'm guessing you still probably vividly remember, like, what was that first day like, when you sit down at the computer and you're like, now it's just me doing my thing. What was that like?

It felt great, honestly. You know, I. Some of the things that I kind of prepared for was systems. Systems was a big thing for me, and in order for me to structure my day between my family, I have a son, so he was having to stay home. And, you know, we're all trying to figure out this new normal, having a system to where I knew I was going to spend this much time on this. You know, I had a system in terms of how to manage clients because I had kind of, you know, been doing a little while. So now it was just like, okay, you have more time, but how are you going to manage it? So, yeah, that was the biggest thing I have, you know, an office space. So I was kind of used to that because we were already working virtually. So not huge in terms of any problems because I'd kind of like, been in the world a little bit. But it was kind of refreshing to have more time to focus on my own business and being able to serve people with more time during the week versus maybe an hour in the middle of the day. Yeah, exactly. Squeezing it in.

When you talk about systems, what do you mean by that and what does that look like? How have you been able to implement systems to help you?

Sure. The biggest thing, especially when you are marketing on social media, is that you are getting people, you're capturing them on your website or on your email list. And I needed to have a system to kind of move them through the customer experience. If you are not on my calendar or if you're not in my. My database of clients, I will forget. I just. If it's not in some place where I know you're holding, it will escape me in that, you know, I just didn't want to have a bad customer experience where I've just like lost somebody in my inbox or something like that. So having some of those, like, automated emails or, you know, the big thing about moving people from social media to my website so that they can see what it is that I offer things like that to kind of keep the. The leads coming. So that was the big thing for systems. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting. It reminds me a little bit of a interview I did with an author named David Allen. He wrote Getting Things Done. I don't know if you know anybody who does like GTD Getting things Done, but he. Yeah, he. One of the things that he talks about a lot is like the brain is a terrible place to store stuff. And it's like that concept is such a, I'm always having to remind myself of that. Like my brain is not a good like filing cabinet. It's, it's, it's a good like easel. Like it's good for creativity and learning and like curiosity and, and. But it's not a great place to like store the project that needs to get done. Like, and what I hear you saying is you've realized that and created systems almost like I think of it as like secondary brains.

Yes.

Like places stuff so your brain doesn't have to store it. I think is that what are some of the systems that you use for that?

Sure. One of the things that I have to do is I write notes a lot and I dump them into a tool called Notion. And I probably use tons of tools leading up to Notion. So, you know, before that, Airtable or sometimes just my Google Docs, Google Sheets, things like that. But as soon as I have an idea or something, it's got to be put somewhere because it will leave that quickly. So if I'm trying to come up with content, I'm, you know, saving it for later Notion. I have started doing the whole time blocking thing in my Google Calendar just to kind of keep me like this is the time I'm going to spend creating content. This is going to be time I'll have for any calls or strategy sessions. Yeah, I'm trying to stick to that because I need the, that 10 minute reminder like before this call to be.

Present idea being that you get a little notification and it's like, hey, in 10 minutes you got to be starting to think about creating content.

Exactly. I also have, I use Dubsado as my client management system so that you know, as soon as somebody fills out an inquiry form or an application on my website, they're automatically put into my system as a lead until I like book them and say this is an actual project that I'm working on. But it's kind of like it runs everything in my business. Invoices, contracts, everything's in there. Scheduler.

Yeah. And that's called Dubsado. Yeah, that's great. When you say that I Can think of a few times where I've seen invoices come in from Dubsado. So we haven't used it personally, but I know that a lot of people we interact with use it, so that's maybe a good transition. So you talked about, you know, kind of the essentially this funnel where you have people that are interacting with you. You have, you know, social that you're creating. Maybe it's content that you're creating that leads people through this process of eventually saying, hey, I want to work with Andrea. They fill out a form, they follow up with you. What is it that you're actually doing? Like, what are the services that you're offering to the clients that you work with?

Sure. So there are a couple of ways when it comes to social media, I can, you know, just do an account. Some people just kind of need to have somebody else look at their account, see what am I doing, what am I not doing? That's usually the first step. And then they can determine if they want to have an actual strategy session with me where I kind of talk about. We can talk about all the platforms, honestly, in that call, but we usually focus on Instagram because it's one of the ones that everybody's on. It's probably growing, where people are growing the most, and then kind of apply some of those things to the other places. And then the other service I have is after I've done the strategy, we've done the audit. If you feel like you still are having trouble creating content or, you know, designing it, then I have a couple of retainer spots. But I recently moved to a content planning day. For people who have long form content, like podcasts or a blog, we can literally create your full month in just a few hours based on, you know, repurposing some of that content. So that's the three ways the review.

I'd be interested in that. Oh, sorry. Review session, and then the content planning. Cool. So I'd be interested in that first one. When you're doing an audit of somebody's account, what are some of the things right away that come up as opportunities or common mistakes that you see? I would assume it's kind of like, you know, I'm trying to think of another profession, like an organizer, like, who comes in and they're like, they kind of have all the tools in their tool belt of like, okay, you see it enough and, you know, here are the things that. That are kind of some common areas of opportunity or potentially some areas that might be considered mistakes that could be Cleaned up.

Right. The first thing I look at is someone's profile. That's usually what people look at when maybe somebody shared your content somewhere else or they happen to see it in the. On the Explore page or in a hashtag. And I always look at that profile page because it's where you're going to capture people, either for them to go to your website or they decide I'm going to follow for a little while. So the first thing is usually how they are being searched on Instagram. A lot of people find me on Instagram because my profile name is Squarespace plus social media strategy. So if they're looking up those things in the search, that's better than having just my name, because maybe people aren't searching for my name. So I leave my name. It's still my name, but that means I have extra space for something that people will actually search for. So that's the first thing I always say, you know, getting, you know, Instagram as like a mini Google in terms of what people are searching for is helpful. And then other than that, the idea.

With that being because it's a search engine, you want to think about potentially branding almost like the title of your account around maybe not your brand name, but what your goal is, or like the tagline almost. So for a Food Blogger Pro, maybe that's a little bit easier. But like, you know, Food Blogger Pro, we could potentially look at saying something like, you know, Blogger Pro, grow your food blog. Or like, is. Is that kind of what you're getting at?

Yeah, something to where. I mean, Food Blogger is probably gonna be pretty niche. It's better than a lot of other accounts. But if you were focusing on, you know, just the podcast, you know, people might look up a Food Blogger Podcast, you know, anything that will be as specific as you can get it, but also something that you believe people are looking for on the platform. So that's pretty optimized, I would think. And then in terms of your bio, you're really just, I think, expounding on what that profile name is and what you can provide for people. So those are usually the first things I look at.

Yep. So idea being. And I, I feel like Food Blogger Pro maybe, you know, is doing a decent job with this, but it's. So Food Blogger Pro is the name, and then it below it says, we'll help you start, grow, monetize your food blog tag foodblogger Pro for a chance to be featured, learn more, and become a member. So it's, it's kind of like we're kind of doing some promotional stuff there, but also sharing a little bit about why we exist and what we do. Yeah. Might not be the ultimate example because it says food and more food. It's like essentially that's what it is. But like opportunity potentially there to do a little bit more explanation of like, hey, here's why pinch of yum is great. Like in explaining specifically some of the things in the bio area. Is that kind of what you're getting at with that?

Right. And I mean, I like that you gave a call to action too about getting people to that one link you have. So that's, that's pretty important too, so that people know what the next step is.

So what do you do once you're here? Yeah, that's great. How about other things that kind of are common in when you do that kind of initial analysis or audit? That would be worth pointing out.

So hopefully people are using stories or some of these other content types that Instagram provides in terms of reels or even guides, which I think are really great for bloggers because in those guides you can include maybe your top posts about a particular ingredient or these are all the recipes we did for October. So utilizing those different content types means that people can actually kind of look and see what you're doing right there on that profile page and then keeping your highlights, those story highlights refreshed. You know, if there's something from like two years ago, people are like, but if you're sharing everything that's going on, you know, recently in those highlights, it gives people a good idea of, you know, what they'll expect to see kind of day to day on your, on your account.

So idea being if you have something that's a little bit outdated, potentially just drop it. And making sure that your stories and highlights are, well, stories would be. But highlights would be up to date, relatively recent, that it's not kind of this old outdated content that exists there.

Yeah, I mean using stories in general is helpful because people get to see kind of like the not polished stuff, you know, if they're going through your grid. So. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you have a sense for. I feel like over the last five years, different areas of Instagram have had more traction in terms of your ability to grow. I'm thinking as a for instance, this is maybe more than five years ago, but like, hey, if you do video, it's really easy to get a bunch of views. Right. Like it's a new thing. You know, Instagram's really promoting that. It's becoming important. And then eventually there's enough. My understanding would be like, hey, there's enough video where that isn't like a little cheat code anymore. It's essentially just a common practice. And so it's harder to get exposure just through the type of medium.

Right.

Is there anything like that within Instagram right now that you get the sense of, hey, if you do this type of content, there's a better chance that it will get more exposure because Instagram wants to give that medium of content more eyeballs or, you know, there's less competition there maybe.

Right? That's what it is. Honestly, anytime they introduce something new, it's always great to test it or hop on it as soon as you can, because there will be not as many people. Now, I do know since we're, they are kind of pushing video especially for creatives, they're giving all of these different bonuses to people who are creating reels or if they're doing Instagram lives, they have all these bonuses for if you've done three or if you've done five. They'll actually give you money to actually create some of these things. I know that they're also rolling out ads for igtv. So if it's something that you're normally doing in terms of those long form videos for Instagram or maybe you're pulling something from YouTube, YouTube to Instagram, they'll allow you to monetize those videos with ads. Obviously, you know, they're, they're slow to roll out some of these things for everyone, but, but how do you know that or not?

The ads go.

You go into your, your settings and you can look at the creator section and they'll say, you know, if you can activate these bonifit bonuses for the month or for the quarter. So you just look in the settings and then it'll actually kind of pop up under like creator accounts and it'll say you're eligible for these bonuses.

So they're really trying to almost like Lyft or Uber. Like I had a friend who is a Lyft driver and it was like, if you do three rides in the next week, you'll get a $50 bonus or whatever. But it's almost like Instagram doing that where they're like, hey, if you create, you know, three types of this content, right, Is it literally them just venmoing you money? Like, how does that, how does that happen in terms of them sending you money? And then what does, what amount would somebody be able to get if they do do some of these, like, monetary.

Bonuses you give them. I think a lot of people have the link to, like a PayPal, and then you can set it to where this amount you get it, or it's like a timing thing, give it to you at the end of the week or something like that. And just as we were talking about that, they also have these badges where if you're doing Instagram Live, people can just, you know, at a dollar up to like $5, people can buy these badges. And I've seen people. It's just like tips. And I've seen people make up to like a hundred dollars just hopping on Instagram Live and talking about things, you know? Mm. So.

And that has to be something you enable within the creator section.

Yes. I think it's more likely that people can do the whole badge thing versus the bonuses. So you're more likely to have access to the badges doing Instagram lives versus the bonuses. But they're really just pushing video. Just kind of how you said if they come up with something different, like these different stickers, that's always something that boosts your kind of like Instagram story engagement using all of those different stickers. But, yeah, I think right now it's video for sure.

The. The. One of the things that's interesting, I don't know if this is still happening, but platforms like Snapchat just directly paying people, it's kind of like YouTube in that way, but it seems less standardized and more like, Wait a minute. Like, you read these stories of people getting like a hundred thousand dollars from their Snapchat account. It sounds like Instagram's is maybe not quite as like they're not there yet. Connected to the success of. Yeah, they're not there yet. But do you know anybody or have you read any of those stories of creators on Snapchat getting these, like, super substantial paychecks? And what's your understanding of those situations?

I've heard about it More so with TikTok than I have with Snapchat. I feel like it really depend on that person's following. First of all, with like, TikTok, you have to have like it. A lot of people will tell you it's very easy to get tons of followers on TikTok. I'm like, yeah, but you still kind of have to create the content. You just can't do one or two here and there. Yeah. So I've definitely heard about it on TikTok. I feel like Snapchat is a very niche place now than it used to be. So there's like not as many people, they've kind of like flooded TikTok. But I, I know that program exists. I just don't know anybody who has benefited from this.

Snapchat sure feels like kind of the lottery in a sense. Like there's some people who've won the lottery. I don't know anybody. But it is happening. But just kind of interesting to see people incentivizing kind of creators. The other thing I thought was interesting in talking about your, the, the different services you offer this idea of like a content planning day, I think that's really appeal people who feel kind of overwhelmed by the burden of creating content and doing that forever. We talk about it as, you know, feeding the, the content monster. And he's like, he's never, he's never satisfied. He just always wants more food. What do those content planning days look like? And any advice for anybody who wants to get more efficient and strategic around planning their content so it doesn't feel like every day they're starting at zero.

Right. I think the biggest thing is repurposing content that you may have already created, especially for bloggers. You know, they've created blogs, they may have done some videos and they don't know that. You know, you can kind of chop up some of that stuff and use it. You know, posting once is, is good. But you know, somebody, especially if you're relying on social media platforms, they probably need to see it three or four times to make sure that you're, you know, following can even see it that once. So the first thing I always say is if you have that long form content, think about creating your content all around this particular long piece of content. That way you can probably from one blog post have three to four pieces of social media content. And then when you have something like Pinterest where you don't really have to spend a lot of time, maybe you have a different graphic, three or four different graphics for one blog post. You know, they're going the same place, but maybe you just need to, you never know what people are going to see. And they're like, oh, I want to click on this. So I kind of start there with how many things can we get out of something you've already created? And then also having these content pillars or buckets where these are things I'm always going to talk about. And I'll just kind of like talk about this on Wednesdays. That means all your Windows Wednesdays are scheduled based on that or I'm going to have these tips on Tuesdays. Come up with three or four. That will just make it easier if. And you know, one of the things that I do for myself is kind of like collect things as I go. Maybe I read something this week and I need to write that. I'm like, oh yeah. When I, when I sit down and create my content, I want to use this so that when I do sit down, I may have already created a couple of ideas that I just need to flesh out. So it's really, that's really the planning that you do. Once I do it with somebody, I think it's easier for them to do it on their own because they've seen me go through start to finish in terms of, you know, scheduling or creating for the full month. But I've had a couple people be like, you just do it better. And they might come back. Some people might have a photographer that follows them all the time, so they have tons of content to share. Most people don't. So, you know, maybe we need to find some really good stock images or, you know, you never know.

That's great. And the thing that I like about the idea of kind of picking different days is sometimes I feel like restrictions make it easier to make decisions. And so having boundaries, it's not like, you know, blue ocean, where do I go? It's like, here's the path, here's. Here are the guardrails. On Tuesday I always talk, you know, I'm thinking about Food Blogger Pro. On Tuesdays we always talk about a tip for Google Analytics. It's like, oh, that's a boundary. But it actually makes it easier because then I don't have limitless options and it doesn't become analysis pre alyssis like the decision has kind of been made and then you make a micro decision within that which feels like really helpful. There's kind of a version of that that pinch of young team is doing where they've shifted to do from doing like any recipe anytime to doing series based content. And so they'll do like a soup series or you know, SOS series. And that has also made it easier from a content perspective because it's like, okay, for October we're just doing soup. Like that's just what it is you ever see people doing right?

But then, but you can still, you can still think there are so many soups, you know, that still gives you kind of that birth, like I can stay in this realm.

But there's so many things still, so many opportunities.

Do you, do you ever see that.

With social where people will do like Like a series within a month or, or a time period and kind of depart from like, hey, every Tuesday, every Wednesday. I do this instead, like for the month of October, I'm going to focus on this kind of general area or niche within my broader niche.

Right. I think I've seen a couple of people do that actually, where if they're a brand designer, they want to emphasize the return of investment on what a brand designer does with you. So they may talk for the full month about what you should expect a brand design to do for your business, what you can expect to get back, whether it's money or if it's recognition or things like that. I definitely have done things where I talked about tools I like to use to create content. So I could talk about something each week. I could spend a week on canva, I could spend a week on Adobe products, or I could spend a week on an app. There's so many apps I use or have tried to use, so. Or a scheduler I can use, you know, spend a week on later. A lot of people like to use later to schedule their content. So, yeah, I, I think that again, makes it so much easier for you to stick to something and not feel overwhelmed, like, well, what am I going to do today? You know?

Yeah.

So even if you're not a person that plans day by day, if you think of it as a week, like this week, I'm going to talk about it still kind of gives you a structure, but you wouldn't have to actually like, put out on Monday. I'm gonna do this Tuesday. It just gives you. I realize that there are different ways people like to do planning and everybody might not be able to do the day by day, but if you, you know, think of it as a week or maybe a month, then it really does help you not feel overwhelmed by creating content on the fly. For sure.

Do you have a, do you have.

A story or an example of somebody that you've worked with or follow along with or know who kind of had a unlock in some way? Like, hey, they discovered a way to use social and found like business success with it. Or maybe they knew how they wanted to use social and they were able to experience a lot of growth or any stories that you can give. I always think stories are so impactful and helpful as we think about our own journey.

Yeah, I had a client and we started from scratch, like, zero followers. So we did a strategy session and I kind of listened to what her business was going to be about. She was doing candles, vegan candles. But the theme of the candles were like, hip hop references or that culture of references.

So what's an example of one of the candles? Like, the scents would be hip hop references.

Yeah.

Okay.

Like, one of the scent was called House Party.

Okay.

You know the movie back in the 90s?

Yeah.

So she had that. She had another one like Peaches and Cream.

Yep.

And then, you know, all these things that were references to songs or movies during that time. So, yeah. Knowing that that was what she's going to talk about, then we kind of like went through the whole, who will you be talking to? How do you think those people will receive your messaging? What kind of things do you want to talk about? So it was easy for her to kind of pull, well, this is what's happening right now in the culture. So she, one day she might talk about what's happening right now in the news, or, you know, the other time she'll be promoting. And sometimes I said, just seeing behind scenes about maybe how you're making candles. There are tons of accounts where people are literally just making things. No, no. Real magic.

It's just, you know, it's just documenting the process of them creating.

Yeah. I said, these are the things you're already doing. So just document those things and, you know, package them for social media. And, you know, so we just gave her that system and she launched and grew. She is. She now has her own brick and mortar.

Cool.

She has over the 10,000 followers. People need to do the swipe up or the now the sticker. So that was very exciting to see somebody starting from zero. I know people are like, I want to start with some of the followers. I'm like, okay. But, you know, starting from zero is awesome because when you get to see all the growth, but also, you know that you're attracting people who are actually going to buy or book their service versus starting with maybe your friends who may. May or may not engage.

Yeah.

With your content. So that was fun to see her grow and then eventually open an actual store in the middle of the pandemic. So that was awesome.

That's really cool.

Oh, I didn't know if you wanted me to say. Her account is at Candles for the Cultured.

Cool.

If anybody wants to check it out.

We'Ll link to that in the show notes, too.

Okay.

So one of the things that recently happened this week, this episode won't come out as close in proximity, but Instagram goes down, Facebook goes down. Right. It's like, yeah. For a lot of businesses, a lot of people that massively shifts how they work and how they operate, how they communicate. I know for us, as an example, we had a sponsored content piece that was supposed to go out, can't go out, so we have to wait. Obviously not a huge, huge deal. We just communicate with the brand and let them know. But Right.

What do you feel like were the.

Learnings coming out of that and recommendations that you'd have for people or maybe just kind of reminders of like, hey, social is great, it's super important. But also, don't forget xyz, whatever.

Right. You know, the biggest thing I always say is have an email list because if you were starting some kind of challenge or something that day, you could move it to the next day. But maybe people need to hear from you, say like, okay, this is what we're doing. And so having that email list is gold because you are communicating directly to them whether your social media is up or not. Say you were having, needing people to come to the website for like a sale or something. Having a website is pretty important and being able to go on there and say, yes, we know Facebook and Instagram is down, but you know, our shop is still open or something like that. I would also tell people not to just have Facebook and Instagram. Maybe your client isn't even there. Maybe they're on LinkedIn or a lot of people use Pinterest now as their Google. So I'm just a big cheerleader of diversifying the platforms and not feeling like you have to be on all of them, but just enough to where you can maintain or manage without missing stuff that's going on in your business.

Yeah, it's almost like we talk about that in regards to social platforms and I think sometimes people feel burdened with like, man, I have to be on.

Everything and produce all the content everywhere.

And there's something to be said about doing one platform really well, getting traction there until you have the bandwidth or resources to build out. Either hire somebody or maybe you just have more time, like for you, you know, you make the transition from side hustle, domain hustle, suddenly you're able to do more.

Right.

I think that exists for other creators as well. But to not forget about those other platforms, that might be, you know, important considerations. You know, for us, we think we don't really do anything on TikTok. And so it's like that's a question for us. We probably have the bandwidth with our team to do it, but we've just kind of neglected it. So what does that look like to start to think about creating content on that platform. Well, go ahead. Yeah, sure.

That.

Share that thought.

Oh, no, I was agreeing. In terms of once you feel like you've had those platforms down, if you have some more space to move somewhere else or maybe repurpose some of the content you already did somewhere else and see, let's see how this does on this new platform then. Yeah, that's a good thing to kind of like transition into.

That's great. How about the email piece? So that's obviously an important piece for people who have feel like they have success on certain platforms, whether that be Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, maybe it is their blog. What are your recommendations for starting to introduce email to your followers as another place and another area where people should be following along with and engaging and just signing up for that?

In general, I think transitioning to email marketing means that you have a bigger audience that you know for sure will see your content. It's always, you know, I always tell people, it's not always guaranteed that people will see what you're doing on Instagram. So using your email list, I think a lot of people used to be scared of email lists because it's like, well, what do I say if I'm not selling anything or whatever? And I think it's gotten a little easier because people are treating an email list like a social media platform in terms of just kind of either giving the same messaging or expounding a little bit on like, you may have seen the post today, but you know, I had. Here's my extra thoughts on it, you know, and. Or, you know, sending out a video that people can directly engage with in their inbox and then respond, you know, if they have questions. Having that back to forth is sometimes feels a little more personable than social media. So I always just think email lists feel like you're really connecting versus whatever you're getting when people are scrolling through social media. So nurturing that audience means that you'll probably get a better response when it's time to like sell something. So.

Yep, yep. When your candle launches. When you're. I'm looking at the site right now and it. I'm trying to see there's a. When the poison. That's one of them. Poison Candle launches. Black Girl Magic. Oh, great. You have those big launches. So my guess is, you know, in a conversation like this, we get through it and people are like, I want to be doing this, I want to be doing it better. And I also don't want to be the one making the decisions on like best practice for doing this. It's obviously why your business exists.

Can you talk a little bit about.

What that is and how people can get in touch with you if they would be interested in working with you and maybe the best first step into doing that?

Yeah, I think a lot of people find me through Instagram. So if you, you know, if you start there at Andrea Baligan on Instagram and then I usually give a call to action to, you know, either DM me, I'm not afraid of having conversations in DMS that eventually lead to bookings, or the link in my Instagram goes to my website, which is baligunstrategy design.com and on my website, of course list all of the packages or services I provide. I also design squarespace websites, so you'll see that too if you go to my website. But that's usually the first step because again, like I said, systems, it's the best way to get into my system to make sure that I.

Everybody's coming in same area. Yeah. The last question that I'd have for you, Andrea. So having recently made this transition to working on your business full time, what would your encouragement, recommendations, advice be for other people who are looking to transition their side hustle into their main hustle? What would you say to those people?

The first thing or maybe one of the most important things is having a great support system. Entrepreneurship can get kind of, I don't want to say lonely, but you can get into your own head and you're not really having productive or positive conversations with yourself. So having a group of friends that are either entrepreneurs too or having a really supportive partner that kind of like gives you the time, like you need to focus on this. Having that support is really, really huge. Especially because business goes up and down. I'm on Sunday, Monday. I might need to watch something really motivational to just pump me up for the week. And having that support is just, is vital for me.

Yeah, it's amazing how close together my good days and bad days can be. It's like, wait, shouldn't there be some kind of like slow transition into like really good and then like over a two week period maybe it goes to bad, but it's like no, that's like a 12 hour transition.

Yes. I tell people, you know, if once a day I need to throw on the Hamilton soundtrack to just pump me up, I will do.

What is your go to? What is your go to? Hamilton Pump up song.

The one one shot's pretty. Yeah, it's pretty much at the top.

Yeah. It has to be. Yeah.

And something about listening, honestly, to a lot of just movie soundtrack, period. Because it's. The music is always trying to get you to be pumped up or moving.

So it's, like, created to emote. Like there's emotions meant to be attached to it.

Yeah, yeah. But Hamilton has been one of the ones this summer that I had to listen to just like, all right, I can get through the rest of my day.

That'll be. I'm going to cue that up immediately after this.

That's great.

And I think an important reminder for people that even though you are, like, in your case, would maybe be at a. At a place where you'd consider, like, would you ever consider yourself a solopreneur? Do you have a team that you're working with?

No, it's just me right now. There have been a couple times where I needed to outsource some things, but it's really just me. Yeah.

Yeah. And I can remember that point as well. And the idea of, like, you're an entrepreneur, you're building your business. And to your point, like, especially when it's an online business, like, you're not. It's not like you have a, you know, a brick and mortar store where people are coming in and you're interacting with them.

Right.

It's like you on your own. And that community is so important. How did you find that group of people.

At first? Sometimes I have some people that I know in real life that are cool. I have met a lot of people online being a part of other mastermind groups or other Facebook groups, other people's Facebook groups, and just end up connecting that way. I started doing public speaking at some of these online summits, and so I met a lot of people that way. So just making meaningful, meaningful connections on social media has been. Has been awesome because I think a lot of people are kind of, like, going through the same thing, and if you kind of talk about that, then you'll find, you know, some of those same people responding. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. And sometimes to your point, takes you being willing to share the thing that then resonates with other people. And they say, I feel that, and I see that and I understand that. And that can be such a great connection point. Andrea, great conversation. Really appreciate you coming on, sharing your story and excited for folks to be able to connect with you and learn from you and hopefully work with you as well. So thanks for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

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