Day 1: Why YOU Must Have a Specific Strategy When You Go Live and Where to Start!

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Hi and welcome to the five day live video challenge. My name is Shelly Hitz. I'm the best selling Author of over 40 books and the creator of AuthorAudienceAcademy.com I am so excited to bring this challenge to you. So this is a challenge that you asked for. I surveyed my audience and I sent out an email and I asked, would you be interested in this? Would you be interested in a live video challenge? I have been doing live videos since June 5, 2015. Now today is June 6. So I have been broadcasting live for just over a year and hundreds of broadcasts later hours video. I have learned a lot about what to do and what not to do on live video to build your audience, to sell more books, to sell products and grow your tribe, to grow your audience. I'm so excited to be sharing these step by step strategies with you in this challenge. Now it's interesting because when I decided to do this challenge, I thought, okay, I'm just going to do kind of what I did last time with the author platform challenge. I have another five day challenge and I thought I'm just going to make a simple checklist and I started working on it and it became a 17 page checklist. Ah. Like you guys that know me, like, I just love to teach, I love to give and this thing ended up becoming a full blown course. So be prepared to enjoy some really great content this week as I share a video training but also make sure to get that checklist. It's a 17 page checklist and you can get it@shellyhits.com live video and I also have a special bonus training that you'll only have access to on day five in the members area and it will be for the challenge finishers. So I am all about taking action. I want you not just to learn more information, I want you to implement what you're learning. If this is the right time, if this is the right marketing strategy for you, I want you to implement it. So at the end of five days, anyone who chooses to go live publicly, on a Facebook page, in a group, in an event, you will get this bonus training. And this is a really, really valuable training. I've spent hundreds of dollars on my own coaching to be able to develop the strategies I'm going to teach you in this bonus training. And that bonus training is called live video 7 Ways to Use your Live stream for even more exposure to. So don't just stop with Facebook and Facebook Live. Go the extra step. So I want you guys, I want you to dig in deep. I want you to do what you need to to go live your first time. Or if you've already gone live, go live again and implement the strategies I teach you this week so you can get that bonus training. So this is day one. Day one is why you must have a specific strategy when you go live and where to start. I'm not going to leave you hanging. I'm going to show you what to do as far as strategy, and then I'm going to be sharing the strategies I've used to be able to build a tribe of loyal fans without spending a ton of money by using live video. I have a growing business, but cash flow's been tight because I keep hiring people. I keep investing my money back into the business. I haven't had a ton of money to spend on Facebook ads. So what I have done is I have done other strategies and techniques that are free. And one of the best ways that I have been able to actually earn income through social media is through live video broadcasting. I've had people sign up for my author audience academy simply by being on my live broadcast. I have had people be able to join my tribe and purchase from me later simply from finding me on live broadcast. It really is a powerful strategy. And you guys, it's free. As long as you have a smartphone, you have the Facebook app, you download that for free on your phone, you can do this. It's a free strategy. So if you don't have a huge marketing budget, this is an option for you to use. All right, why live video? If you guys aren't taking notes, make sure to get out a pen and paper. Take notes. I also have the checklist for you. So. So you don't have to take every single note, but make sure. I just uploaded it. I just finished it. I've been working on it the last three hours to finish up this checklist for you guys. It's@shellyhits.com live video. But I want to start off with why live video? So Facebook is favoring live video up to 10 times as much as any other post. This is according to Kim Garst. She's a social media expert and she said basically what's happening is because it's still a new platform, fairly new for Facebook Live, that Facebook is still trying to really push it. Facebook is favoring video, period. And I know many authors are terrified of video. They're just like, ah. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But I want you to really seriously consider this. If you want more exposure, that this is a time to really dig in deep and to use a platform that Facebook is actually going to give you more exposure right now. Now is the time. Don't wait. Do this five day challenge and at the end of the five days, wait for all five days. Because I have very specific things and very specific strategies I want to teach you. So you do it with the most success and the most exposure possible. But if you go live after these five days, you have an opportunity to reach more people. Live video is real and authentic. It's just, it's me, like I'm not going to be able to edit out little ums and ahs and bloops and bloopers. And I think that's part of what scares a lot of people. Because I know a lot of you are perfectionists and you want to have everything high quality. And I do too. But you know what? In our culture that we live today, people value real. People value authentic. So would you prefer someone being real and authentic and sharing with you their story, zits and all? Basically? I mean, I've struggled with acne my whole life. You get to see it all. Like, I have scars and everything, you know, or would you want this edited, polished video that makes you feel less than because you feel like that person is perfect and you can never live up to it. People love it. And they know. I mean, they know instantly whether or not you're a fraud or whether or not you are the real deal because they can see you. You're not being edited. You're not like behind some video production studio. You're here live on Facebook and this is, this is me. This is me in real time. Today is June 6, 20, 2016. You know, I mean, it's real, it's authentic and people love it. They actually do. And if you make some mistakes, it's okay because people then can actually relate to you. Like, oh, Shelly actually makes some mistakes too. She flubs up occasionally too. She loses her words too. They can relate to you. So just take down, tear down that notion or that lie. A lot of times, you know, those of you that are Christ followers, it's a lie from the enemy that you have to be perfect or that it has to be production quality. People want real. I mean, there's things you can do to make it, make sure it sounds good, it looks good, but in the end, they Want value, they want connection, they want relationship. They want to know that you care when you say their name out loud on a broadcast. That is a huge, huge connection. There's actually really nothing that grows the know, like and trust with your target audience better than live video. We always used to say it was video, you know, video marketing, but now it's live video. The basics of marketing is to get your audience to know, like and trust you. The very, very, very fastest way to do that is to use live video. Actually, I was doing a live video on Friday talking about how I was going to be doing this very broadcast and somebody was on my broadcast. I'm going to find her comment because I thought it was so great. It's in the checklist, by the way. But she was like, Shelly, when you called out my name, I was like, wow, that really was a connection for me. Okay, here it is. It was Sarah Baker. She says, thank you for your answer. When you started speaking to my question and she asked a question, I spoke her name, I answered her question. It was like a one on one little coaching session. And she says, I totally felt a connection with you different than a pre recorded video. Can you guys see how live video would be powerful for you to make a one on one connection for you to connect and relate with someone that is in your target audience, for them to be able to grow a relationship with you? Isn't it powerful? It's also some of the best market research you can get. I've noticed that since I've been going live on live video broadcasting. I started on Periscope June 5, 2015. I'm glad I wrote down that number or that date. That was my very first day to go live. But since I went live on Periscope, I've been live on Blab. I've been live now on Facebook Live. Facebook's where I hang out the most. It's where my audience is and it has so many advantages. I'm putting most of my time now on a Facebook Live. I'm still on Periscope occasionally. But when I first started live video broadcasting, it was immediate feedback. So many times we have a book idea, we have a product idea, we have a marketing idea and we just think it is the bomb.com and then we release the book or we release the product or we release the marketing idea. We put that promotion into place and it fails and we're like, what happened? I just thought it was the very best thing ever.

One of the things that you can do is you can get immediate Feedback, immediate market research. Like, right now, I can ask you a question. So I can ask you a question like, what is the number one thing you want to know about live video? Post it in the comments below, and I can make sure then that I cover your questions in this challenge. You can do that type of market research or just see what people are saying, what they're commenting. You can use their exact words on your sales pages and your book descriptions, those types of things, because those are their pain points, those are what they are saying. But you can know right away if your idea is a winner because you get instant feedback. And then the final thing I wanted to say about why live video is that you tend to be at your best. So if I was just sitting here recording from my outline a static video, there would just be a little bit less of me in it. Because when you're live, you have to really dig deep, and you're on. You know, you're on. Shalene Johnson, she's one of my mentors, and she says that when she used to do her podcast, she'd sit in her basement and she would record, record, record, stop, edit, you know, stop, stop, record, stop, stop. Now she uses her live broadcast, and she just speaks her lesson or she speaks her thing, and it comes out so much smoother. I've modeled what I do now from her, and I'm now using many of my live broadcasts for my podcast as well. You just tend to be on your game. You just tend to be a little more up and things come out that probably would not have come out if you were just sitting here statically recording a video. And you know what? Sometimes if you're statically recording a video, you start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. Oh, I didn't like the way I said that. Start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. Have you ever done that before? Like, sometimes we just make it harder than it has to be. And we're so hard on ourselves, right? We are our worst critics, and so we will just criticize, and it will get us out of our flow. Whereas if you're on live video, if you make a mistake, guess what? Just keep going. Guess what? Make a joke of it or laugh about it or say, hey, it's live video. You know, your audience will actually start to love you for that kind of stuff, and it will really be able to help you move forward. If you've been stuck in audio or video before live video, it's just like, okay, let's do this. I do recommend you have an outline for your training. I Do recommend you're prepared. And that's what this training is, is all about. It's to actually, this five day challenge is to give you the confidence and the preparation, the tools and everything. You need to feel really confident to go live. We're doing it together, we're doing it as a group. So it's a group thing. I encourage you. Give the like button, hit the like button of other people's comments, reply to them, encourage them. We're in this together. And it just makes it less scary when you have a group effort. All right, so that's why live video number two, strategy. I want to talk a little bit about strategy because there is this actual thing called bsos. Bright Shiny Object Syndrome. Yes. So what happens a lot of times with marketing especially is it's like, ooh, live video, I need to do that. Or oh, Pinterest, I need to do that. Or ooh, libraries, I need to do that. Or ooh, blog tours, I need to do that. And what happens is you just get distracted and you just try to do too many things all at once and you don't end up doing any of them really, really well. And then what sets in is discouragement. So I hear this a lot from authors. They're discouraged, they're disillusioned, they want to give up, they're not getting book sales, but they're trying to do 20 different things. And every time there's a new thing, they're like, ooh, I'm going to try that. Ooh, I'm going to try that. And so they never truly dig roots. They never go deep in anyone's strategy to really see the results. I've been doing live video consistently for the last year.

That will give you an idea if it's going to work for you. And it has. I mean, I knew it was working for me and I've been able to then use the content in so many other ways for my content marketing. But we need to have better focus. And so what happens is discouragement sets in. Oh, and then people say, oh, it doesn't work. Email marketing doesn't work. Blog tours don't work, or this doesn't work, or this isn't, you know, it's not working. And then I dig deep and I say, well, what have you done? And it's just like kind of a fly by the seat of the pants, you know, just like a very scattered strategy. And it's like, well, but I'm also doing this, I'm also doing that. I'm also doing this, and I'm also doing that.

Take a deep breath. Ready?

There are about a million different things that you could do to sell more books and products, to build your audience online, but I want you to really have focus. So live video, honestly, may not be for you. It may not be the bomb.com for you.

That's like the word for the day. I guess it just may not be the thing for you right now. What I like to have you to do is to focus. You know, if you're going to do live video, if you're going to do this challenge, what I ask you to do is to not just make it one of your little fly by the seat of the pants things. I want you to have a strategy, and I'm going to talk about that in a minute. And then I want you to actually give it time, do it consistently for a season, and then go back. I always say test, track, and tweak. So test it. See what's working, what's not working, track it. There's a lot of analytics Facebook gives you on your videos. And then tweak it. If you need to tweak it, don't just say it's not working. What you can do is tweak it. And you guys, this is so fun. I was actually creating a special offer. I have a special offer for you guys in the members area, but I was creating a special offer. It's for $10, and so it's similar to when people will sign up for writingweek.com they get an option for a $10 upgrade. And this is something I'm going to be teaching in authoraudienceacademy.com over the next few months. But anyways, it's a basic sales funnel. I was setting that up for this challenge, and I was using templates because what I like to do is I like to set up templates and reuse the things that I've set up. Systems are my secret sauce. I say that all the time. Set up your systems. I was just duplicating what I had used for my writing week challenge and editing it and changing it out. I figured out, because it hasn't been selling as well for writing week, the $10 offer, I'm like, what's going on? I figured out this link that I linked to was for how I had originally set it up, but then I've changed kind of the way I set it up, and I'm like, oh, I need to change that link. So it goes directly to the checkout page. I was making them do two steps. So sidetracked on that. But this is real life case study. Sometimes when you think something's not working, there's just something little that needs to be tweaked. So I'm going to be interested to see the results after I change that. But sometimes we're so close to it and we just need to step back, we need to look at it with a different set of eyes. Okay, what is going well? What is not? What can I change? What can I tweak? Instead of just throwing up our hands and saying it's not working.

You promised me.

Promise me that you will give this a good try. Like that this is not just going to be a bright shiny object for you. Because I don't want this just to be another distraction for you. I want this to give you real results. I don't want to just have you be wasting your time on this other strategy that, yeah, it sounds good, it works for Shelley, but I want you to really give it your best effort. You know, it's just because, guys, I care and I talk to too many authors that are not getting the results they want. And I really, really, really, truly believe it's because they're not giving it consistent time and effort. So with your strategy, what you want to do is you want to offer value or it can also be entertaining. Entertainment is value.

So you want to have a purpose for when you go live. You don't want to just go live and be like, hi guys.

How are you doing today? And just not really have anything to say. That's the quickest way to get unfollowed in the Facebook feed. You want to start with energy. You want to start with an attention grabbing intro. And we're going to go into my exact outline in day five, so be waiting for that. But you want to have a teaching segment if you are nonfiction, most of you, or it's motivation. So maybe you have like scriptural stuff or self help type of stuff. You know, it would be some sort of teaching segment where it's motivation or you're teaching like today I'm teaching a specific skill, a specific topic. Now sometimes you'll just want to share some stories and relate them to your topic. I do that as well. You know, it's not a hard fast rule. But please, please, please have a purpose when you go live and have a basic outline. Like I have my basic outline written out right here.

And what happens is then I. A lot of times I'll even just put it on a post it note. So when I'm doing this as a, as a more in depth training. But if I'm just doing a regular like 15 live stream, I'll just get out my post it note and write down like three to five main tips that I want to share what the title will be and then that's my outline. Let's keep it simple, right? We don't have to complicate it, but you do need to add value. You do need to have a purpose and you do need to go into it. Your target audience, they are tuned in to the radio station wiifm. Have you heard those acronyms before? What's in it for me? So don't go on and on and on and on and on about you give value in some way that is going to help your target audience. What's in it for me? You know, that's what they're thinking. And if you're just going on and on about yourself, your book, this, that, that, that.

They'Re probably going to click off really quick and tune out really fast. Always have a call to action on your scopes. And I have this in my outline for day five. Don't worry, we're going to get to that. But a call to action CTA is a basic marketing term. Many authors are missing this in all of their marketing. You should have a CTA on your blog post. You have a CTA on many of your social media posts. You have a CTA on your videos that you're prerecording all sorts of things in your emails. One main CTA CTA call to action is just what is it you want them to do as a result of watching the video? So this video, my main call to action is I want you to sign up to get access to my members area. You'll be added to my subscriber email list, which is awesome for me. You're joining my tribe. You'll be able to get access in the members area to have the videos in order. You'll get the checklist, you'll have access to the bonus training. Plus you'll be exposed to my special offer for $10 on how to do pre recorded videos. That's my main call to action. So you've already heard me give it several times. Make sure you get the checklist@shellyhits.com live video. So that's something you always want strategy wise. You want to think about what is your call to action. One thing I did at the end of last year that really helped me is I actually created a list of all of the different calls to action that I could give on a live broadcast. This is something that you could do. Maybe it's an email sign up list. Maybe it's to like your Facebook page, maybe it's to buy your book, maybe it's to read your blog or to subscribe to your blog, subscribe to your YouTube channel. There are so many different things that you can do to have a call to action, but just have one main call to action in each video. This was a big lesson I learned and my last five day challenge I had I think maybe like three calls to action. I didn't even fully realize it until I went live. I'm like, oh my goodness, this is so confusing.

And in marketing, a confused mind says what? Do you know what that phrase is? A confused mind says no. So if you don't make it clear, have one main call to action. People aren't going to know what to do and they'll just not do anything. Make sense? Okay, so the last thing about strategy, not the last thing, but the next thing is I want you to consider going live on your business page, not your profile. So you can actually go live on your Facebook profile. And I've done that a few times as well. And yet on your business page you have access to so much more. You have access to more statistics, you have access to editing your video more. You can actually, if you want, most of you won't be at this stage to do it, but if you want, you can actually run an ad to a live video. I just recorded a video, I think it was last Thursday that I'm planning to use as an ad for my webinar. So you can do things like that. There's so much more opportunity. Plus this is the big thing for me, you guys. Facebook's terms of service says you can cannot be selling paid products from your personal profile. So I wouldn't want you guys to get your accounts shut down. Now. I talk about my business all the time on my personal profile, but I do it in a way that my friend Kelly McCausey, she calls it bubbling. So it's like you're bubbling like, oh, you know, I did this today or oh, I was so excited for my member, my author, audience, academy member that just published their new page print book or that just got number one on Amazon or whatever, I'll bubble about it. But you don't want to do hardcore promotions on your profile.

What I want to do is be able to encourage you guys to use your business page. It will make your business page stronger. The other thing, you can also go live in private Facebook groups. I do this in my private Facebook group for Author Audience Academy. I'm able to go live in there. I do live accountability and Q and A videos almost weekly. And you can also go live on Facebook events. So if you would rather just create an event like a book launch event or a book promotion event, maybe you'll lower your book to 99 cents and then you'll do the book promotion through live video on an event page. You can do that too. I just want to keep people in my Facebook page because I want them to keep seeing my other posts. I want them to learn to interact with me here. I want to build a very powerful like page, but I also don't want to have issues with my profile because I do a lot on Facebook and so I would never want to get my account closed down. So I encourage you to do it from a Facebook page. Here's some things I want you to think about when you use live video. There's three main ways I'm going to give you for strategy and I want you to think about how you want to use Facebook Live. So the first is a book launch or a special promotion. These are the different type of promotional events you could do. And when I'm saying you could do this through live video, again, you want to add value. You don't want it just to be an ad. So I encourage you to share a tip or share some sort of strategy or share something that your target audience would find value in. And then let them know about your book launch. Then let them know about your promotion that you have going on. Make sense? Again, these are in your checklist in the members area if you don't want to write them out. But I want you to be thinking about if promotions are going to be one of the ways that you're going to go live. And I just want you to think about your first video. Obviously, I hope you do it ongoing, but this very first video, at the end of this five days, what is going to be your strategy? So it could be for a book launch. I did that for my nine strategies to build and grow your author platform. I just recently finished that challenge. Let me see, it was May 9th through 13th, so about a month ago. And you can use live video for a book launch. All right, so book launch is the first promotion. You can do a webinar promotion. Like if you have free webinar coming up. I recently did this. If you're watching live, it's currently the pinned Post on my page. You can watch. It's like a two minute video, less than three minute video. And I gave a really good tip and then I invited them to join my webinar for more tips and then I plan to use that for an ad. So that's something you could do if you have a special book promotion. So if you have a 99 cent book promotion or your book is free, or you're part of a group promotion or you have a content or a giveaway, any of those things gives you a reason to share and again share something of value. But then say, hey guys, right now I have this really cool contest going on and I'd love for you to join me. It's and then give the call to action. Alright, so you could also do a product launch. So if you have a smaller product is often called a tripwire, like a ten dollar, anywhere from seven to ninety seven dollars, you could do something special on Facebook for that. If you have any kind of product launch, you can talk about your product, give a tip, give value and then lead them. Give them that call to action. Where to sign up for your product. This was really cool. Amy Porterfield, she's also one of my mentors and she recently launched a program and when she was launching it, she came on Facebook Live and the video was just like her talking about, I've just added an extra bonus for my program. So if you guys are interested or if you've already signed up, it's in your members area. But those of you that are kind of on the fence, this is the bonus, this is what it will give you. And she said it worked really well for her. Another promotion you could do is when you're at a speaking engagement. So Mia Davies, she has the podcast God Centered Success. If you're a Christian entrepreneur and you're not listening to that podcast, it's a great one to subscribe to. But she recently was at a speaking engagement. She just had somebody, they were actually just holding the phone. It wasn't even in a tripod. Record her entire presentation. I actually watched it this weekend and it was really valuable for me. But she just did it live on her Facebook page and it was the presentation. So if you have permission from the conference or where you're at, you could do something like that. Or you could just do a video before or after that speaking presentation and then people know you're a speaker. You could even say, hey, you know, if you need a speaker for your next event, just look me up. I'm@shellyhits.com speaking. And then another one is book signing. If you're at a book signing, you could actually do a live video. That's kind of a fun thing, you know, and you could let people know you're, you know, show them your table set up and where you're at and what you've been doing. So that would be something fun as well. Okay, so that's, number one is a promotional event. All right, so that's number one is book launches and promotions strategy. Number two is content marketing. Now, similar to blogging or having a podcast, you can create content that your target audience wants on live video. And then you can, like a blog post or YouTube video or a podcast, you lead them back to your email subscriber list to grow your tribe or you interact with them, you give them value, and so that they want to take that next step with you. They want to buy your book, they want to find out more. I was just thinking, Teresa Mills is on here. She has children's books on travel like Teresa. Wouldn't it be fun if you're out and about with your grandkids? What do your grandkids call you? I thought it was a different name. It wasn't Grandma, but Nana's Adventures. Kind of like a little series on Facebook Live. And then if you're out and about and you're at the zoo, you give a tip, like for. Oh, Mimi. Yeah, I knew it was something different. So Mimi's Adventures. And you could give a little tip for wherever you're at with your grandkids. And then you could let them know, to get my book series on this, go to and give them the URL. So that would be cool. So content marketing, you guys. There are a million and two ideas on my broadcast Friday. It's on my page if you want to scroll back and see it. I was brainstorming with a graphic designer. She's like, Shelly, I don't know what I would broadcast about. I said, well, I think there's a ton of things. Like you could talk about what makes a good picture, what colors go together, what tools to use. I mean, there's a ton, a ton of things people are interested. If you need any ideas, just survey your audience. Survey them. Ask them. I did a survey earlier this year and asked, what topics do you want me to talk about on my podcast? Or you can do some keyword research and Google Keyword Planner. It's a free tool. And find what are people searching for in your niche already on Google? If they're searching for it on Google. They're probably interested in it. Those are things you can do as well. Well, but day three, we're actually going to write out an entire list of topics and stories and all of that. This is just kind of getting you ready for what you could do. But content marketing is one of the main ways I use Facebook Live. I use it and then I do a content marketing blitz. I'm going to share my exact live video blueprint. For any of the finishers that do a live video, I'm going to give you that video. It's going to be awesome. I'm going to be at my easel actually drawing it out for you guys. Exactly what I do. I use it mostly for content marketing, but you can do so many different topics and ideas. But my main thing with content marketing, if you're going to choose this strategy, is to be consistent. When I first launched my podcast, I had a new episode every Tuesday. Very, very, very consistently. Now that I have a team and I have people working for me, I'm able to do more. And so now with the live broadcast, I'm trying to do three to five a week, and then they get transcribed, they get on my blog. I'm going to go into all the detail of that in the bonus video. But at least think about, like, okay, two times a month, once a week. What would be reasonable and realistic? I don't want you guys, you know how you get, like, you think, oh, like, I totally, you know, you have the best intentions and you're like, I'm totally going to do live video every day. And then you, like, don't do it for five months. And you're like, oh, what happened? Like, don't bite off more than you could chew. Like, do something that's realistic. What time do you have? What kind of topics do you have? Is once a week doable for you? Then do it at least once a week. Choose a consistency that works for you. So we had book launches and promotions, content marketing, which that's my biggest. And then the third one is list building. So I always integrate this into my content marketing, but I just wanted to make it as like a separate main goal. So list building. If your email list is teeny tiny right now, do you even let people know about it? Do you have calls to action to get people to sign up? Is your gift juicy enough that people are like, yes, it solves a pain point. I want to sign up. Make sure you have a good lead magnet, too. We teach all of that in Author Audience Academy. But what you need to be doing though is driving people giving calls to action to have them sign up.

You could give your little tip, give your little thing that you're sharing and then say like, Teresa Mills, what is your freebie for parents? I don't know if you have like a certain type of checklist or something, but she could say, you know, when she's out on Mimi's adventures, she could talk about her book and stuff like that, or put it in the description. But you know, maybe her main goal is to build her list. So instead of talking about her book, she says, yeah, and I have this amazing checklist for you guys. After hundreds of trips with my grandkids and with my kids, I've created this checklist for you and it gives you access to X, Y and Z. Solves these pain points. And you can get it at this link. Alright, One thing I forgot to mention earlier that I wanted to about introverts. How many of you are introverts? I find that a lot of authors are and that's cool because introverts are really good writers. My husband is an introvert. He is a better writer than me. Like he is. He's just gifted in writing, but he's an introvert. I mentioned earlier, one of my mentors is Chalene Johnson and she is an introvert, but she is a live video machine. Another introvert is Kim Garst. She's an introvert, but she does live video consistently and has sold thousands and thousands of dollars on live video. But people who are introverted are like, but I'm introverted. Live video won't work for me. But this is the thing you guys, Shalene was saying, I'm an extrovert and it works for me. But introverts, it can work for you. Because listen, Shalene's like, I get to stay in the comfort of my own home. I can fit it into my schedule, I can do it when I want to do it. And then she doesn't have to face the big crowds afterwards, like at a speaking engagement. It's on your terms, it's on your schedule, it's when you have energy. And she loves it. Like she does it right now. She's, I think in her marketing impact academy. But I mean, therefore she was doing it like daily. And she's an introvert. So I think don't totally say it's out just because you're an introvert. You know, it totally depends on each individual person. Just know this is on your terms. Like right now, you guys, you can't see it, but I'm wearing my pajama bottoms. I just put on a shirt and a little makeup and I use dry shampoo, so I didn't even like get a shower this morning. I sprayed a little dry shampoo so I wouldn't have greasy hair. And then I put on a necklace and I'm standing here in my PJ's.

Real life, you guys, you know, it doesn't have to be harder than it needs to be. I'll probably put my hair in a ponytail and go on a run after this and it fits in my lifestyle. It is nice if you have a specific type of time to go live when you're first growing your audience. But it's just, I love it. I love being able to work from home. You can adapt it to you adapt this to who you are, to your gifts, to your abilities, to your strengths, to your personality. Don't feel like you have to do it the way I do it. Do it the way that is best for the way God created you to be.

So those are the three options. Part of the success, I believe, of some of the most successful people in the world are that they make decisions. Sometimes you just have to get in the habit of making a decision. Sometimes you need to wait. You don't want to make them too quick, but sometimes we wait too long, don't we? We just think, oh, we get paralysis of analysis. How should I do this live video and when should I do it? This and that. And it's like, let's just make some decisions and let's do it. That's what this five day challenge is all about, to get you in action and to get you over the hump, over the fear, to what will work best for you. So the final action step, it's in your checklist in the members area, is to list out your main goals for this live video. And I just want to share from my case study. When I did my book launch, I had eight different goals. So I mean, you can use your live broadcast to touch a multitude of things. So let me just share with you what my goals. This was a book launch, it was a five day challenge and my personal goals were, number one, to sell more books. Sell print books. Because I had just launched the print book. Number two was to build my email list. So it was list building because you can get access to the videos and checklists@shellyhits.com platformchallenge. Don't get distracted. Stick with this though, until you're done with this. Number three was to build buzz about my books on social media. So we're going to be talking about that tomorrow about how you could do all the promotion and it helps to build buzz about you, your brand, your books on social media. Number four was to get more book reviews, which I did. Number five was to create a system I can teach other authors. And so now that system, the checklist, the swipe files, the templates, it's always inside the bonus module of authoraudienceacademy.com I shared that with my authors and it's very, very valuable because it saves them a ton of time and it gives them a jump start that then they can just use what they need and has the email templates, all of those things. Number six was give value to my tribe, my audience, leading up to an author audience academy promo. So I did a promotion the week after I did that challenge and I added 111 new members to my academy. It was powerful because I spent the whole week just giving, giving, giving tons and tons and tons of great content. And then I did the promotion and people were almost like, you know how the old water pumps, you had to prime the pump. You almost start to prime your audience for then when you're asking them to invest in training. But then people also get to know that I know what I'm talking about, I'm an expert in this area and I can help them. And then my goal number seven was to create a powerful like page. And what happened is all my engagements increased, increased, increased, increased, increased. So right now, oh my goodness, I've been on this an hour. So you guys have written a lot of comments, there's been a lot of interaction. You can do the reactions. Have you guys seen that, like the little bar across, you can do likes or hearts or wows and you can just, you can keep typing them through the live broadcast if you want. You just start getting some interaction and everything went up, up, up on my page during that challenge. And then my eighth goal was to create an evergreen funnel to continue working for me ongoing. So you can still sign up for that challenge@shellyhits.com platformchallenge. That was my first five day challenge and that will be available ongoing. It's evergreen content. It's not gonna really change that much. You and you can continue to sign up for it, continue to watch my trainings, continue to get to know like and trust me and hopefully eventually you'll want to invest with me in some of my products or services. And so those were eight goals that I had from Live broadcasting. Can you see the power? I mean there is so much power. Like not only did I sell books, I got more likes on my page, I got more reviews, I got more members into my Author Audience Academy. And it was just a really incredible promotion. And so what I want you to do is I want you to think about what are your top three goals for your live video. Your first live video, you know, I was doing like a bunch of things at once and so I want you to keep it simple in the beginning. I want you to keep it simple and do what you need to get out of the fear and to move forward. I do want you to know what's coming up next. Day 2 Discover 17 ways to promote your live stream for free. To get more exposure and better results. I do recommend that you come live if you're able, because I'm able to interact, answer your questions and then if not, make sure you always watch the videos. I have it all listed out in the checklist already for you. I was working on that this morning, about three hours before this started. I was just finishing that up 17 page checklist. So it's a lot of information, you guys. Most people would charge money for this training and you're getting it for free. That's what I love to do. I love to give tons of value so that you'll know like and trust me and that you'll realize like I can help you, I have answers to solve your problems and that eventually you'll be interested in joining Author Audience Academy. That is what I do, that's what I love to do. But even if you can't invest in in authoritating's Academy, you will get value and you will be able to implement what you learned through this five day challenge. And I hope then that you share it with others. So if you have found value in today, I recommend that you share this broadcast after it's finished. You can just click the share button on the video like you do normal videos or you can share the link. Shellyhits.com livevideo invite your author friends or share in author groups. Just let them know, hey guys, this is something going on this week and I encourage you to sign up. It's really great information. All right. But day two is all about those promotions and we all love free, right? So I'm just sharing free ways that you can share your free marketing strategy. Live video is free. All the things I'm going to share with you tomorrow are free. It's not going to end up costing you a ton of Money. Now, everyone is going to get different results depending how large your tribe already is, how large your audience already is. But you know what consistency yields the best results. I started with one subscriber and now I have thousands. You know, I started with one book sale and now I've sold over 103,000 books. We all start with that very first Facebook fan. You know, Facebook, like, we all start at the same place with one person at a time. So don't get hyper focused on the numbers. We're going to be talking about that on Friday, too, in day five. Don't get focused on how many live viewers there are because people are going to be watching the replay. It's going to be living on Facebook forever. You can repurpose the video afterwards. There's so much you can do with it. We've covered a lot. I've been on here a lot longer than I intended. But I want to make sure you guys get started on the right foot with a good foundation. This is not a bright, shiny object for you, that you have a good strategy. You know what you're going to do moving forward, and that way we can go right in to the next days of the challenge. I had to get over the mindset block. I had a lot of scarcity. Part of that's my family growing up. My grandparents were born and raised through the depression on my mom's side. On my dad's side, they grew up very poor. His dad was an alcoholic. They never had money. There was just a spirit of scarcity that I really had to get over as far as investing in an email subscriber service. Once I did that and I knew I was invested monetarily, it really gave me the motivation to put energy into growing that list. And if you only have money to invest in one thing, I recommend investing it in your email subscriber list. The second thing would be just a basic website web hosting. Once I finally decided to do it, then I. I've just consistently grown over time. What I recommend is start out with maybe like 15 minutes. You can even just do two or three minutes if you're doing a promotion. The tip, though, is the longer you stay on Facebook Live, the more exposure and visibility you'll get, because the more people will start seeing it in their feed, the more people that may hop on or may see you. The longer you go, the more exposure and visibility you get. But you want to make sure you're having something very valuable to share and that you're not just droning on and on and on and on, you know what I mean? Like, but I'd say like normally I try to keep mine around 15 minutes. If I can be flexible, like see what works, find what's kind of your sweet spot. And for me personally, my sweet spot tends to be around 10 to 15 minutes. Now for an ad or for a video that I'm wanting to do for a promotion, that's where I wanted to keep it. Less like two to three minutes. But experiment, don't be afraid to experiment a little bit. I do want you to make though your first video really out of the park. Just some really excellent value, great tips, some of your best tips, some of your best content. And let's say you decide, I'm going to live broadcast once per week and let's say that week you have something planned with your grandkids. So that's your live broadcast that week. If you don't have anything planned then just jump on and offer a really good tip or offer some sort of funny story. I'm sure you have some funny stories of your travel that would just be entertaining. And parents love knowing that they're not alone or grandparents, that these things happen to other people too. That's why some of these videos go viral, because there's crazy stuff that's happened to us, you know what I mean? But just make sure you're staying consistent. And the weeks you do have a Mimi's Adventure, that's your live broadcast, you know, you don't have to worry about anything else. Right now I'm looking directly into my lens on my iPhone and it looks like then I'm making eye contact with you. If you're reading maybe paragraphs, maybe short little paragraphs or quotes or things from your book and then expound on that. Just talking. You don't want it to be too scripted. Live video is meant to be more free flowing. And so that's my concern with a book signing type video is that it'd be too scripted. But yeah, definitely. Like consider taking out little snippets or little things that you could, you could really expand on and say this is in chapter five on page so and so you could actually have your book. That's one of the things we're going to talk about in day four. Different props. But you have your book and you say yeah, on page 87 in my book, this paragraph, blah blah, blah blah blah. And then you can expound on it. You say, yeah, I also follow that up with a checklist and this and that and you can pique their Curiosity like oh, page 76. Oh, I didn't know that was in the book. That's cool. Maybe I'm going to have to go buy that book. Does that make sense? So when I'm doing a challenge like this, I do try to do it the same time every day because I want you to be here live. When I'm just doing my content marketing strategy day to day, I love to just fit it into my schedule. So if I'm not having a good energy day, I just don't live broadcast. I don't worry about it. Or if I don't have something really valuable that I want to share. Normally that's not a problem. I have a whole list of of things, ideas, but I don't worry about it. But that's because my strategy is content marketing. I'm going to be using the video on my YouTube channel, on my podcast, on my blog, on social media. I'm going to be using the content anyways. Now if your goal is to get people to interact with you live, then having a specific time is very, very wise. If you're just building your audience and you have a small audience, that would probably be the best way to really get the biggest bang for the buck is to really have a specific time and be consistent with it. But you don't have to fit it into your personality, your lifestyle and then test, track and tweak, see what works best for you. Your call to action with the URL can be to your website. So you can see I'm saying go to shellyhits.com live video sending you back to my website to sign up for my free gift. And it's basically this challenge, my 17 page checklist and the bonus video, access to the bonus videos if you finish it and all of that. Does that make sense? Whatever your call to action is that day, if you're doing a video and you're wanting people to book you for a speaking engagement, you'd say I hope you really gained a lot of value from today's video. If you're looking for a speaker for your events on X, Y and Z topic, I would love to talk with you. You can see more at my website shellyhits.com speaking and contact me there. And I would love to chat and be part of your next event. See what I did there? I just sent them back to my website. So I would just create a URL that you can say easily. I personally use on my WordPress self hosted site, the Pretty Link Lite Plugin. It's free that's how I create those, you know, a lot of those redirects or like my speaking page. That's just the URL. I just made it very simple because I wanted to be able to make it easy to remember. Does that make sense? Have you guys gotten value today? Do you feel like it's given you a little more confidence to go live? I want to make sure I'm giving you value. I'm helping you to take action, that you're getting what you need. You guys, this is what this challenge is about. It's about let's do this. Let's stop putting it off and let's do it. And it's together. We're doing it as a group. I have a bonus for you if you do take action. So I'm motivating you with extra training. Be encouragers for each other too. This is what we're about. This is a community. This is my tribe, my audience. I'd love for you guys to get to know each other as well. All right, again, my name is Shelly Hitch. I am the best selling author of over 40 books. The list keeps growing. I'm a podcast host over at Author Audience and I'm the creator of authoraudienceacademy.com I created this 5 day live video challenge for you. You asked for it and I'm creating it for you to help you overcome your fear and to finally press go live on your Facebook page. We are going to continue to go through step by step, each of the processes that you need. I'm going to be here giving you all the strategies and the tips that I've learned in the last year of live broadcasting. If you found value in this video, please share it and please share the link with your author friends. It's@shellihits.com livevideo. Let's get more people in here. The more energy we have, the more people doing this, the more fun it will be for all of us. All right, thank you, guys. Bye Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her six step ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.