Strategize with Creativity

26/02/2023

Real talk: If a collab isn't aligned with you, it won't be aligned with your audience, and the audience of your collab partner won't be aligned with you either. 


Most of us have done a lot of collabs that were disappointing, but thankfully, it doesn't have to be that way.

Making sure your collabs are aligned is the first step. ✅

To learn more, check out the podcast episode below and the rest of the Collaborative Intelligence series. Jess Kotzer is the expert in collabs and you'll find amazing information on her channel.

Check out more eps at sellwithcollabs.com/episodes

22/02/2023

If you know me, you know how much I love talking repurposing content. It’s cost-effective, increases your reach, improves your SEO, and allows you to engage with your audience in different ways without having to create new content from scratch all the time. ⠀
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I wrote a guest blog post on 3 ways to repurpose your podcast content into exceptional blog posts: two of my current favourite ways to do marketing. It’s a quick but important read if you have a podcast, were a guest on one, or have a client who has a podcast. This blog post is for you 🎉⠀

https://helpfornewbloggers.com/3-ways-repurpose-podcast-content/

20/02/2023

If you don’t love the content you’re creating, chances are, it won’t give you the greatest results.

Honestly, we can tell when someone loves or hates their content. Maybe not always, and it may be harder to notice in writing, but I am sure you have noticed the difference between two marketing posts on social media where one felt flat and the other felt extremely passionate.

The truth is, passion sells. As humans, we love passion. We love to see it, we love to feel it, and we tend to gravitate towards passions and passionate people.

Not only does it make your content often more engaging, but it also makes it much, much easier for you to create it.

I often mention the story of how it would take me an hour to record a 30 seconds reel on Instagram and yet only 15 minutes to write a long written post on Facebook that I could then repurpose in an email, as an Instagram carousel, and as inspiration for a future podcast episode or blog post.

“Trending” reels are supposed to be the best thing for your social media marketing right now, and yet? They were my least popular posts. My long written posts, in comparison, fared significantly better, and this is because I actually do enjoy writing them. I am passionate when I write, whereas when I’m recording a reel with trending audios, I’m nervous, self-conscious, and way too much of a perfectionist.

The result? Waste of time, effort, and for little to no results in return.

You truly do want to take some time in your day to ask yourself about what type of content you prefer creating, and why.

If nothing comes to mind, then perhaps it is time to start new forms of content, or doing microshifts to what you’re already doing so it’s more aligned with who you are and what you like creating.

So what content is your favorite to create? Do you have one?

17/02/2023

If you’ve been spending day and night on your marketing and have been feeling exhausted, you probably need to start repurposing content (or at the very least, repurpose it in a way that is efficient and serves you, which can look differently for everyone).⁣
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It’s easy to get lost in all the marketing we want to do. Often, what happens next is that we’ll want to quickly get it done so we can move on to the next task, thinking that the more we can get done, the better.⁣
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That’s not always true. ⁣
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Marketing is a long game. It rarely yields instant results. So if you’re spreading yourself too thin in your marketing and not doing it in a way that serves you, you’ll be heading towards overwhelm and burn out.⁣
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My advice is to choose one marketing method (e.g. social media posts, or blogs, or reels, or podcasts,etc.) that you like doing best, invest yourself in it, and then repurpose your content across the board. ⁣
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If you create content that you really feel satisfied with, yes, it might take a bit more time at first, but in the end, it’s time-effective. Not only because it’ll be good content that represents well your brand and your business (which means you can easily repurpose it), but also because it’ll be fun to do. And if you want to make it even more time-effective, get a VA to assist you or to repurpose your content according to your strategy and your system so all you have to do in the end is the marketing that YOU like doing. ⁣
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Let me give you an example.⁣
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This post you’re reading right now is actually repurposed from a live I did in a group some time ago. I went live, talked about repurposing, recorded the video and then had it sent to my VA to get it transcribed. Then, I use the transcript to do a bunch of things. I write social media posts (like this one) inspired from the live, I create emails from the posts, and I draft a script for a podcast episode on the same subject. From the podcast, I then write a blog post that goes deeper into the subject. When posted, I’ll repurpose that, too.⁣
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All from one live I did. ⁣
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At the end of the day, we do not have the time to create content nonstop. And we shouldn't have to. Repurposing is magic both for you and your audience, because not everyone is going to be seeing all of our content, and even if they do, they won’t remember every bits and pieces of it. Plus, people consume content in different ways, and this gives them the opportunity to consume the content in whatever way they prefer. ⁣
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There’s really no right or wrong way of repurposing – it’s about finding a method that works for you and helps you reclaim some of your time in an aligned way. Choose a starting point (i.e. whatever way of delivering content that you like doing) and go from there. ⁣
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So my question for you today is: what do you think is or would be a good starting point for you?

16/02/2023

“You need to choose one niche.”⁣
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Those words always were terrifying to me. As a multi-passionate business-owner with ADHD, the idea of choosing one thing and forever sticking to it sounded like a nightmare. ⁣
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But I’ve tried it. I would say my niche was service providers. Then I switched to coaches. Then to consultants. Then to “coachsultants”. And so on and so forth — until I realized it made honestly no sense for me to niche down that way because it didn’t matter to me what was my audience’s titles were — what mattered was what they wanted to achieve with their marketing. ⁣
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Another thing I’ve been often told is that I should specialize in one aspect of marketing (i.e choose either social media marketing, or email marketing, or websites, and so on and so forth — and ditch the others). Again, another nightmare: I didn’t want to choose. ⁣
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And we shouldn’t have to! At the end of the day, my specialty is aligned marketing (i.e. doing marketing in away that feels aligned for you and your business). Aligned marketing involves whatever feels aligned for you — social media, emails, funnels, websites; you name it. ⁣
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No, I’m not the #1 top expert in any of these and I’m not aiming to be, either. When you choose to go down the multi-passionate path, that means you’re dividing your time between several things, making it harder to be a top expert in 1 thing. ⁣
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But that’s okay! We NEED multi-passionates, because they are the people that can help guide us the most. If I specialized myself in social media and ditched all other methods of marketing, and a client came to me not knowing which marketing method to choose out of all the options out there, I wouldn’t be able to guide them the way I can now. Similarly, if a client comes to me wanting to tie all of their marketing together between emails, social media, and their website, I wouldn’t be able to help them if I wasn’t a multi-passionate digital marketer. ⁣
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At the end of the day, we need both multi-passionates AND specialists. We help people who have different needs and goals. I chose this path, because it is the path for me. I love being multi-passionate. I love knowing about a lot of things. That makes me a great guide and strategist for my audience.⁣

Being multi-passionate is awesome and we need to talk more about it. Beyond aligned marketing, I am also a creative fiction writer, and soon to be a neurodivergent wellness mentor in my new business. Having all these projects helps me staying focused. Sounds counterintuitive, right? But it’s true. For a lot of folks with ADHD, switching between projects keeps the dopamine in our brains running. ⁣
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I’m curious to know who else in my network identifies as a multi-passionate — and why. What are your passions? Your different projects?

15/02/2023

Have you grown dissatisfied and defeated with the progress (or lack thereof) you’re making in your business? ⠀
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Have you noticed that your audience isn’t visiting your website, isn’t listening to your podcast, isn’t answering your DM’s, isn’t engaging with your posts on social media, and so on and so forth?⠀
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Often, that’s because your marketing strategy simply isn’t aligned with your business and yourself, and it’s not attracting the right audience. This isn’t sustainable, because the wrong audience will either not buy from you, or they will buy once and perhaps never again because your product or offer wasn’t what they needed.⠀
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Let’s change that. ⤵⠀
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Click on the link below to access the new blog post & get started on the 5 questions to ask yourself to start your own aligned marketing journey and go from discouraged to happy with your marketing!

https://strategizewithcreativity.com/start-your-aligned-marketing-journey/

14/02/2023

If you’ve been wondering whether or not a website is what you need for your business, keep on reading.⁣
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I’m here to share the truth: a website might not be what you need right now. ⁣
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I honestly wish someone would have told me that when I first bought my website in January 2022, because I had been paying for a website I didn’t start using until the very end of October 2022.⁣
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This decision has cost me time, energy, and money. The money part is obvious, as I didn’t get to utilize a website I was paying for, but it has cost me an unnecessary amount of time and energy. ⁣
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Why? Because when I first created my website, it wasn’t where I should have been investing my time. My brand message was not clear yet, my offers were not yet crafted, and I was only just getting started on social media—at that point, it made honestly no sense for me to do a website before going through those other steps first. I didn’t even have branding colors yet! ⁣
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So what happened is that I ended up re-doing my website countless times: first when I had my colors, then when I changed my brand message, then when I had new offers, and so on and so forth. I was in constant transitions, and I wasted a lot of time re-doing a website that I should have honestly bought only started a few weeks ago.⁣
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We all have limited time and resources, and while a website is definitely useful (especially if you want to start blogging!), it might not be where you should be putting your energy right now in your business. ⁣
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Ask yourself:⁣
- Does my branding efficiently & authentically represent my business? ⁣
- Are my offers clear and concise? ⁣
- What do I want to use a website for? Who will I send it to? ⁣
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A website can be an amazing investment, but it has to be done at the right time. ⁣
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What do you think? Do you have a website? What would you have liked to know before you got started?

13/02/2023

I've been told multiple times that we "shouldn't" discount our services, our products, etc. because it tells our audience that we don't value ourselves and our time and that our offer must've not been worth X amount of money if we're ready to discount it.⁣
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Listen. I fu***ng love discounts. The second I see a discount for anything I need, I end up sparkling and am so hyped up even if all I saved was a dollar. Why? Because it's fun! It unlocks some part of my brain that's like "I saved up! I can now buy more things!"⁣
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And that's an amazing feeling. Do I ever think "oh if that thing is discounted it must mean that the person/company must not value themselves"? No! I'm too excited to have saved up to make an assumption about what the person or company feels about themselves. And honestly, the bigger the discount? The more excited I become. And if I end up making an assumption about the person doing the sale? It's the assumption that wow, that person is cool. Because thanks to that person, I can get more things for the same price. ⁣
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It's all about the intention. When I discount my prices, it isn't because I woke up that day and felt like I was worth less money. If I put a discount, it's because I want people to get excited. It's because I want people to feel the same way I do when I see discounts. It's because I want people to be able to feel that they can get more for the same investment. It's because I want people that otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford an offer, to now be able to.⁣
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Discounts are not evil and certainly don't mean a person values themselves less. Maybe they do, but who are we to make that assumption? ⁣
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If people want to assume things about me or other entrepreneurs who discount their prices whenever they see fit, then it's their right. But it's not up to us to control what people will assume if they see a discount. I like discounts. So I offer discounts. It's as simple as that. I don't want to restrict myself from offering a sale just because I "wouldn't want people to think I don't value myself." Some people will think that. Others will think like me. ⁣
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And that's who I want to attract, so that works out well for me, doesn't it?⁣
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That's aligned marketing in action.⁣
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What do you think about discounts? Do you like seeing them? Do you like offering them?

12/02/2023

For Valentine's Day, I'm doing something special for myself... a Self-Love Seminar!

The amazing Darla McCann has interviewed us co-authors in the Business on Purpose book for this fantastic seminar. loved being interviewed with these empowered women on the topic of self love and can’t wait for you to hear our practical suggestions on Feb 13th & 14th.

Here's what you can expect from this seminar:
💖 Stimulating discussions about the journey to self love
💖 Practical tips, techniques, and takeaways
💖 Ways to stop self-criticism
💖 Guided visualizations
💖 Self-confidence techniques

Cool seminar for Valentine's Day, right?

Get your free ticket here: https://selfloveseminarwithdar.my.canva.site/jade

10/02/2023

⁣Are you tired of piling up tasks in your business you “need” to do for your marketing without ever really knowing where to start, what to prioritize, or even how to make sure that what you’re doing is ACTUALLY going to benefit your business?⠀⁣
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I was tired too. Between all the (sometimes outdated) advice and noise in the online space about marketing and what you “need” to do (e.g. go viral, start your podcast, participate in a summit, make 6 tiktoks a day, do a ton of engagement, contact 10+ new people a day, and I could go on), I felt utterly and completely lost. I tried my best to incorporate several different methods into a “patchwork” type of strategy and hoped for the best — but “the best” is not what happened.⠀⁣
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What happened instead?⠀⁣
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❌ I had no solid strategy.⠀⁣
❌ I was overwhelmed.⠀⁣
❌ I was lost.⠀⁣
❌ And eventually, I burned out.⠀⁣
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For months, I did not even ask myself how I felt about any of it. I was just going through the motions, adding new tasks to my ever growing marketing to-do list without ever asking myself if any of what I was doing was actually helpful for my business. I assumed it had to be, because I had seen that advice coming from experts. And since they’re experts, they know better, right?⠀⁣
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Nope. ⠀⁣
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Experts, coaches, strategists — we have knowledge, expertise, and (hopefully) the skills to execute excellent strategies, yes. Does this mean, however, that we know better than you? Not necessarily! YOU are the expert of yourself and your business. We are here to advise you, to guide you, to inform you of what you can accomplish, but ultimately, it is up to you to weigh out your options and see what works best for you and your business. It is not (or at least, shouldn’t be) our job to shove our strategies down your throat and proclaim that the only way you will ever be successful is if you follow a 1-2-3 magic formula that worked for us.⠀⁣
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Each time I see that message circulating around the online space, honestly, I run in the opposite direction. ⠀⁣
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I’m not here to discredit other coaches, strategists, marketers, etc. — I have seen excellent strategies coming from a lot of people in my industry and some of them are actual geniuses. ⠀⁣
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Will all of their strategies work for you, however? Of course not. It is absolutely ridiculous to me to claim that a “one-size fits all” formula will bring success to ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE who tries it. Honestly, statistically speaking, that’s just impossible to begin with.⠀⁣
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A lot of my clients came to me after having had an experience with a coach that wouldn’t listen to them, wouldn’t take their uniqueness into consideration, and wouldn’t adapt strategies when my clients would clearly inform them that something wasn’t working for them. Instead, what the coaches did was simply claim that my clients should’ve “tried harder”, “tried better”, or “listened”. Super patronizing.⠀⁣
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At the end of the day, you are the one who has to live with the strategies you choose to do for your marketing — so if something is not sitting right, something feels super draining or something doesn’t make sense to you, that is an excellent sign that something needs to change. Perhaps you need to do a small shift, perhaps you need to gain more knowledge about a certain method so it becomes easier to execute, perhaps you need to find a method you can automate to reclaim your time… or perhaps you need to start something new altogether.⠀⁣
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We don’t spend enough time checking in by asking ourselves if this is working for us. ⠀⁣
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I’m inviting you to take that time, starting today. I’ve created 21 journal prompts you can use to start checking in with yourself when it comes to your marketing. You can write about it, type about it, doodle about it, or honestly just talk about it out loud if that’s what works best for you. ⠀⁣
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What’s important is that you take the time to ask yourself those 21 very important questions so you can start getting rid of unnecessary tasks cluttering your marketing to-do list, start prioritizing what works best for you and your business, and most importantly, start being happy with your marketing instead of drained, lost, and discouraged. ⠀⁣
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Get your prompts below for only $5 — it’s a bargain, and honestly has helped some people more than a four figure high ticket offer from coaches who wouldn’t listen. ⠀⁣
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It’s time to start listening to you.

https://strategizewithcreativity.thrivecart.com/21-days-of-aligned-marketing-prompts

09/02/2023

So what does aligned marketing ACTUALLY look like?⁣
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There’s honestly a million examples I could use, but here’s a shift I recently went through that displays exactly what an aligned marketing shift looks like, and how it makes so much more sense than following a strategy that doesn’t feel aligned anymore (or perhaps never did). ⁣
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It all started when I was told I needed to show up live, preferably weekly, so that I could show my audience that: ⁣
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1) I can consistently show up⁣
2) I can give them a ton of knowledge in a different format (I only did written and graphic posts before that)⁣
3) I can show them who I am, how I talk, my vibes, etc.⁣
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Even if I felt apprehensive about the whole idea because public speaking of any kind always terrified me, it felt aligned at the time because I actually did want to try it out. As a marketing strategist, I like always trying out new things, and it was about time I got on the “live” bandwagon. ⁣
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At first, it was honestly terrifying. I hated it, plain and simple. I couldn’t watch my live videos afterwards because I felt genuinely too cringed with myself. But, as time went on, I actually found myself enjoying a lot of those lives, so much so that my planned “short” 15 to 30 minute lives ended up being an hour long — sometimes even over an hour long! Those lives made me realize that I truly do enjoy talking (instead of just writing) about aligned marketing and that talking wasn’t scary but rather empowering, so I felt more and more confident as time went on.⁣
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Unfortunately, the drawbacks become more and more obvious to me, too. ⁣
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1) I started having throat aches from talking too much to the point where I lost my voice ⁣
2) I started losing focus during the lives because of technical difficulties ⁣
3) I would lose my train of thought each time I saw a comment and then stutter my way back to whatever I was talking about ⁣
4) I would feel imposter syndrome stronger and stronger because of the technical difficulties making me lose my focus, and eventually, my confidence shattered.⁣
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What happened then? Nearly nobody attended my lives anymore. Can’t blame them, I wouldn’t have attended my own lives either. I was so flustered from the lack of focus, both due to technical issues and trying to keep up with comments that my lives just weren’t as good as they were anymore.⁣
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So I had to make a change. Going live was anxiety inducing again and honestly a nightmare because of tech issues and it just didn’t feel aligned anymore. At all. ⁣
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But, I still loved talking about aligned marketing. I didn’t want to stop.⁣
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The solution?⁣
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A podcast. ⁣
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Because I’m on my own when I record solo episodes, and I can edit out the moments where tech issues happen or when I get distracted and lose my train of thought, I feel so much more at ease. I feel calm, confident, and honestly excited about every episode. I love to go through them, love thinking about all the marketing I’ll do around it, and especially love thinking about how much value this will bring to my audience. ⁣
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As I often say, there are so many ways we can do some marketing nowadays that it’s all about finding what feels right. It’s alright to shift things in your strategy, it’s alright to do something new, and it’s ESPECIALLY alright to do something different when your current marketing strategy is making you feel miserable. There’s nothing wrong with starting something new and a few months later realizing it’s not working out anymore. ⁣
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As humans, we evolve, which means our business will evolve too, and so will our marketing. Aligned marketing means listening to ourselves and giving ourselves the compassion, patience and space to make those changes and do those shifts so that our marketing strategy truly aligns with who we are and what we love. ⁣
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For 2023, I invite you to look at your current marketing and see what doesn’t feel good anymore. See what feels more like a chore than anything else. Then think about how you can make a shift, whether it be a big or small shift, in your marketing strategy so it feels more aligned and brings you joy rather than overwhelm. ⁣
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What do you think? Are you going to make any shifts this year?