Focus on your business
This word keeps coming up for me often lately. How do you keep your focus on your business? How do you keep organized enough to keep your focus? What should you focus on?
I’ve been grappling with this for months. I know I want to change the trajectory of my business. I’ve been telling colleagues my mantra is “To write what I love, and work for clients where respect is mutual.” I’ve written this down more eloquently, but the fact is I haven’t carried through with it. Instead, I spend hours each day procuring information to help freelancers, writers and freelance writers, and post this second-hand information on social media.
Social Media
I was an early adopter of social media. I wasn’t actually sure how it would work, but always eager to be one of the ‘firsts’ in everything so I opened numerous accounts. I’ve honed it down to three for my business – Twitter, LinkedIn and a Facebook business page. My plan was to post about all things writing, perhaps believing I’d elevate my status as a writer, but in truth I didn’t really have a clear vision.
Recently, I took part in a marketing challenge with a group of other writers. One of the many benefits of the group is the discussions about our goals. One of my goals was to get back on track with posting on social media. My email inbox was out of control, and most of the information piling up there was gathered to disseminate on my social media platforms but I was falling further and further behind.
During our discussion I started to realize that there was no real Return on Investment (ROI) for the time I was spending on social media posts. That, and investing in a program – Hootsuite – to strategically time the posts, I realized there was no tangible payback. I wasn’t getting any work. The number of followers trickling in had no real advantage for me as a writer. And suddenly I realized I was wasting my time. Wow! Talk about an epiphany. And suddenly I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.
So here’s what I decided. I plan to be more strategic about my social media. The majority of information I’ll will come from me – my 20 plus years as a freelance writer/journalist and what I’m learning day-to-day. I’ll continue to share some links to posts created by other people and organizations, but only those I feel would be of value to my clients and potential clients. That means businesses, publications/blogs and potential writing coach clients. And I’ll mix that with some of my own personal experiences from my other blog Write From Here, because sometimes writing comes from personal experience and I plan to continue writing about my personal experiences like those I was fortunate to be commissioned to write for Headspace.
So, long story short, you’ll soon see a change in my social media streams – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I hope you’ll like the changes.
More Value
My new motto is “less is more.” Less content with more value. Less soul-sucking time on Social Media = more writing time for me and my clients. I hope this change will be of value to my followers too.
I’ll also be ramping up my blog posts here, and on Write From Here. I’ll post links to my new blog posts on my social media, and you can also sign up to receive them in your email inbox if you prefer. I don’t plan to make a lot of money off of these blogs, so you won’t be seeing flashy advertising, just honest writing.
After having this ‘ah ha’ moment, I’m wondering if you’ve had that moment of clarity and whether it took some of the stress from your life? I’d love to hear more about it. Please feel free to comment here and share it.