In this episode, Kirsten and Jeanne tackle the common struggle of spending excessive time on social media and share effective strategies to reclaim 20 hours a week through social media detox and outsourcing.

Social media has a tendency to become a time-consuming black hole, diverting focus from productive work. The hosts provide insights into managing social media, leveraging virtual assistants, and embracing AI tools to boost business growth while avoiding the pitfalls of excessive scrolling.

Key Talking Points:

1. Social Media Time Management:

   - Acknowledging the tendency to lose hours on social media

   - The importance of distinguishing between work time and personal time on social media

   - Setting timers and boundaries to avoid getting lost in the scrolling loop

2. Strategies for Social Media Detox:

   - Planning and setting specific tasks before entering social media platforms

   - Maintaining a conscious approach and questioning the purpose of each interaction

   - Using sticky notes or similar methods to maintain focus and prevent aimless browsing

3. Outsourcing and AI Utilization:

   - Employing virtual assistants to handle content creation and scheduling

   - Utilizing AI for content creation, editing, and social media management

   - Virtual assistants' role in engaging with comments and filtering important interactions

4. Balance between Authenticity and Consistency:

   - Balancing authenticity while leveraging virtual assistants for posting

   - Understanding the difference between personal engagement and consistent business presence

   - Expanding social media presence across multiple platforms for a broader audience reach

5. Conquering Fear and Staying Productive:

   - Addressing the fear of engaging in direct business activities

   - Identifying tasks that require personal involvement and prioritizing them

   - Recognizing psychological barriers and breaking through to enhance business growth

6. AI's Transformative Impact:

   - Embracing AI as a transformative tool for business efficiency

   - Training virtual assistants in AI usage for improved client services

   - Evaluating and implementing AI tools without becoming overwhelmed

7. Moving Quickly in the Evolving Landscape:

   - Recognizing the agility of small businesses in adopting new technology

   - Embracing AI's potential to revolutionize business processes

   - Leveraging AI to complement human efforts and enhance growth

Conclusion:

Kirsten and Jeanne emphasize the urgency of embracing AI and utilizing virtual assistants to maintain a balanced approach to social media and business growth. While AI's rapid evolution holds the potential for efficiency gains, the hosts encourage listeners to avoid falling into the trap of time-wasting and procrastination, highlighting the importance of maintaining focus on tasks that drive business success.

Helpful Links:

The Marketing VA Advantage 

Six Figure Business Coaching 

Mastering Online Marketing for Entrepreneurs

Double Your Income with a Marketing VA, even on a tight budget

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Welcome everyone.

We're thrilled to have you.

, today's topic is from scrolling to Success, reclaiming 20

hours a week through social media detox and outsourcing.

We know that social media, it can be a big old black hole, don't we?

You start on it and you expect to spend just a few minutes there.

You go there to do something specific, and then all of a

sudden you, you're miles away.

You're looking at, you know, your friend of a friend of a friend from

30 years ago who's, you know, got some really great pictures of their holiday.

It's just so easy to get lost.

Yeah, we hear that all the time from our clients when they're posting their

own social media, which we recommend not doing, having someone else do it.

Um, but when they're posting, they, they just get lost and like

two hours of their day is gone.

And I think that is so easy for all of us, and I love the comment that was made.

Um, the best way to grow your business is to be a creator and not a consumer.

So again, how do you kind of have a social media detox in the sense that

you're not, getting lost in there?

Yeah.

It's just so easy to get lost in there.

For me, a couple things is to plan your social media and, and I

even have to plan what I'm gonna do when I get on social media.

So I might sometimes write on a little sticky note, you know?

You need to, figure out what next Tuesday's topic is, or you need to,

you're gonna post in this particular group, this really cool,, thing that

you came up with, so I actually have to physically see something that helps me,

make sure that I'm not getting lost.

. It seems to me that people are in kind of two different schools of thinking.

One is that if they don't post it themselves, then it's inauthentic.

And I would say to that, that, what they're posting for you is they're

just making it look pretty and doing it in different formats, whether that's

a carousel post or just a snippet of your video or a quote from you.

So it's not inauthentic.

If you then wanna go back on whatever platform it is and speak to people

directly, when you have time and do it for business, that's a different

animal, but we're talking about being consistent on social media.

The other part is people who just don't want to deal with social media,

but they know they need to be there.

And that's fair too.

Not everybody wants to get involved in every platform, but you can have,

um, a presence on every platform because nowadays your audience is

on a bunch of different platforms.

So it's really, it makes sense to do that.

Yeah.

The other thing I really wanna address here, because I feel like, , we're talking

about saving 20 hours of time, and a lot of that is done through outsourcing.

We hire and vet and train marketing virtual assistants for our clients,

but one of the things that.

Again, I think we're all guilty of it at some level.

Is it safer to sit in Canva and create designs?

It's safer to sit on Facebook or even LinkedIn and chat there.

And I'm not saying it, it's not, I'm not saying it's not paying off.

What I'm saying is, you know, kind of going down that rabbit hole

of just losing time on social.

And it's safer because you're not actually talking to people you know, as far as

like making sales calls or attending in-person networking events or online

networking events, or maybe creating that new course you wanted to create.

And a lot of that has to do with fear, right?

It's safer to be able to kind of get lost on social than it is to actually

move the needle in your business.

But the problem with that is, If you don't have that discipline and that

structure to do the things that are actually gonna bring in money, your

business is always gonna struggle.

And I can almost promise that for any of us going down the social

media rabbit hole and losing time is not, not it, definitely not it.

And, and that's part of why we love video is because it does.

Showcase your knowledge because you know really, really well, you are an expert

in whatever it is that you do because you work with clients because you've got

experience and so you know, it's really valuable to showcase that, not just.

Using a picture of someone and, you know, representing you, but to actually

have you in there talking and showing and, and getting excited and you know,

and sharing what you already know.

And we just think that those are the most powerful types of social media posts.

Content.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the other thing that's really exciting for all of us business owners is ai.

I like to say it's coming fast and furious.

Um, and it's really exciting, but we can't afford to waste time.

So we have been training our team and we've been training the virtual assistants

for our clients using AI for the past couple of years, and we now have, you

know, someone who actually helps out with all of that to make sure that we're, you

know, looking at AI and figuring out one.

Is it a valuable tool to use?

Because just like social media, it could be a time suck.

Ai, just like outsourcing and automation is really gonna

change everyone's businesses.

It's gonna really allow everyone to level up really quickly so

that's, that's another thing that's really exciting right now.

Yeah, AI is really, it is really cool.

Um, some of the things that it is doing and, and I know some people

are scared of it and sometimes it's getting a bad rap, but.

At the end of the day, you know, I think someone likened it to, you know, one

of the big, you know, worldwide changes to how our business and lives run.

And this is one of those things kinda like, , the, the boom of the

internet, , when everybody started hiding internet and then, , cell

phones, , that was revolutionary.

This is one of those things.

So, we really want our VAs to be trained on it, , so that they can

help our clients understand it better.

And, and the exciting thing is that our VAs want to be trained on it.

they're really excited.

That was one of the, some of the feedback we got from them.

The, in our last training, our paid internship with them is they said,

yeah, we wanna be able to learn more about AI and how to use it.

Yeah.

It's definitely gonna change the world.

Some for the better and some for the worse.

But I feel like especially as small business owners, we can't necessarily

afford to spend a lot of time.

Reading about that and worrying about that, we really have to focus on figuring

out what tools that we can use, how AI can help us grow our businesses, how AI

can help our team grow our business so that we can keep up with what's going on.

Yes.

That's how old we are.

You know, you were working for M T V and we talk about how even large companies

like that drug were kind of dragging their feet a little bit at getting on.

So do you wanna talk about that for a second?

Yeah.

Yeah, it was interesting that, excuse me, they had to actually pay someone to

get their domain names, mtv.com, vh1.com, because they hadn't had , the forward

thinking enough , to get that, to catch that before, somebody else bought it.

So it's just interesting that, it's not only the small business

owners that don't always, , adapt quickly, but the big companies have

trouble with that as well, and.

And actually as a small business, you are more agile.

You are more able to change some processes in your company quicker than a big company

that needs, , the board of directors to do it with you or to approve it.

Yeah, because if you think about it as a small business owner, usually the first

thing that we are able to take advantage of as far as saving us time is automation.

You know, using automation to send out like weekly emails or email sequences

using that kind of technology.

The second thing that we've had was always outsourcing, being able to

delegate to our virtual assistants.

But now AI is also gonna save us a ton of time.

It's another tool, but what I love most is it's a tool that our virtual assistants

can use because I love that question.

Is AI gonna replace your virtual assistant?

I personally don't think so.

I think AI is just gonna give our virtual assistant additional tools to use so that

they can do their job better and faster so we can delegate more tasks to them.

So, but AI is, like she said, coming fast and, um, and you need to jump on the, on

the bandwagon now for your business' sake.

But just like social media, don't go the through the, don't

go down the rabbit hole of.

Acting like you're working.

I don't mean that in a mean way, but we all do it.

Like you kind of get like, oh, I was on social media working.

Well, no, you worked for 10 minutes and you spent an hour

and a half just scrolling, right?

It's the same with ai.

Like quickly look at the different tools that are available, delegate

it to your virtual assistant to figure out how to use it.

Have a conversation about is this the best tool for us, or

should we try something else?

So being able to move quickly like that, not going down that rabbit hole

is going to really give you the time and the freedom to grow your business

and have the life that you want, which is, that's why we're all here.

It's definitely why we're all here.