The Weekly Glow Up: August 2, 2023

Aug 2

Welcome back to the Weekly Glow Up, where I share tips and resources that you should know about as a creative who wants to make money from their art.

Here’s what I’ve got this week:

1. ⚙️ Systems for Success: Spend Less Time on Social Media

If you’ve been around for a while, you may have heard one of my rants about social media for business owners.

Is it necessary? Yes.

Is it worth the amount of time and effort we all are told we need to spend on it? Usually not.

In my experience, more sales come from direct outreach or leveraging other people’s/company’s platforms when you’re starting out, rather than trying to post on Instagram and snag your ideal client’s attention based on an algorithm you have no control over.

ANYWAY 😉, social media is also necessary for looking like a reputable and active business, and giving people a spot to peruse your work and what you’re all about.

So my advice is to use it to build your authority and promote your business, but not to sink hours upon hours into individual posts — there’s not enough ROI for that.

Here are 3 tools you can use to streamline social media for your biz to cut back on the time you spend on it:

Notion: For mapping out your content calendar. You can even create pre-made templates so you can create post captions, carousel copy, and Reels direction super quick 💨
Buffer: For scheduling your posts ahead of time. The free version does enough for me. Just set it and forget it 😌
ManyChat: For automating DMs and replies. You know when people say “comment X to learn more,” and you get an instant message after you “comment X”? This is what they’re using 🙃

2. 🧠 Does Your Business Make You Happy?

I see a lot of creatives strike out on their own to escape the things that made them unhappy at their 9-5.

But it’s easy to fall into the trap of building a business that looks like the one you were trying to escape — because that’s all you’ve ever had a model for.

Do a quick check on how you spend your time today. Your business should look like:

👩🏼‍🎨 You spending most of your time on the creative tasks you love

If not: you need some systems to eliminate manual work or some freelancers/team members to delegate routine tasks to

🧭 Knowing what your top priorities are (and demonstrating that in the time you spend on different tasks/projects)

If not: you need to revisit your foundational systems and business plan to determine your goals and the best ways to get closer to reaching them

😁 Working with clients that don’t frustrate the sh*t out of you

If not: you need to revisit your foundational positioning to make sure you’re marketing to and attracting the right clients for your business

Which of these are an area you need to work on in your biz today?

3. 🍵 Client Tea: Does IG Engagement = Sales?

Something I’ve talked about with multiple people lately is the relationship between engagement on social media like Instagram and your business goals (namely, sales).

I feel like we all have it ingrained in us that more followers → more likes and comments and engagement → more sales.

But that’s so often not the case.

Follower count and engagement rate by themselves are not indicators of increased sales.

When I ran my lettering business, the majority of my followers and people who commented on my posts were other letterers… AKA not people who would be interested in buying my lettering art.

They were more interested in what pen I was using, or how I did something in Procreate.

There are positives to increasing followers and engagement just for the sake of it: you build your authority in your niche.

When prospective clients/customers DO land on your IG page, there’s something to be said for having a decent following. It makes you seem a bit more “legit.”

But ultimately, what’s your goal for your business?

To make money? Or to seem super legit (but not actually be successful behind the scenes)?

I found that the majority of actual income in my lettering business came from either direct sales outreach (me emailing people who owned shops and pitching my products to sell wholesale) or leveraging other marketplace platforms with huge built-in audiences (i.e. Etsy).

That’s not to say you can’t make sales from social media — it’s completely possible, but you have to make sure you’re getting the RIGHT followers, the ones who have a problem you can solve, not just more followers in general.

As I ranted about above 😅, social media is necessary for businesses in this digital age.

People expect you to have a presence so they can do their research and check you out.

But it’s not always the end goal that people make it out to be.

So if you’ve been fully focused on increasing your social media metrics, now’s a good time to pause and ask why.

Are the goals you have for social media really in line with your business goals? What can you do to align your efforts better to get closer to those goals?

4. 📲 A Productivity New App I’m Trying: Rise

Rise is a sleep-tracking app that gives you visuals showing your anticipated energy levels throughout the day.

What I like so far is seeing the natural energy boosts and slumps over the course of a day. I can better plan my work and activities around them so I’m not constantly fighting against my biology. And it shows me how much “sleep debt” I have, so that I can plan for going to bed earlier to try to reduce it and increase my energy potential for the following day.

What I don’t particularly love so far is the number of notifications it wants to send me (you can turn them off though), and some lack of customization.

Worth checking out if you want help getting better sleep and maxing out your energy! 🔋