Quiet the Noise, Grow Your Reach

We trade noisy, constant posting for a clean, strategic feed that educates, engages, and sells. Stories become the place for busyness while the feed stays focused so people actually hear the message and take action.

• three-pillar content plan across educate, engage, sell
• why overposting lowers reach and causes unfollows
• using Stories for rapid updates and interaction
• setting a sustainable cadence of three feed posts weekly
• cross-posting between personal and business profiles
• mapping 30-day content with clear CTAs and outcomes
• choosing metrics that matter for impact, not vanity

Download my free DIY Social Media webinar at my website to dive deeper into content strategy and planning for your business

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Today’s Hook
• 1:18 Sensory Triggers and a Bracelet Story
• 3:32 From Distraction to Content Strategy
• 4:41 Gala Lesson: Audience Noise Hurts Message
• 5:26 Define Posts: Sell, Engage, Educate
• 5:48 The Overposting Trap on Feeds
• 6:32 Use Stories for Busyness, Not Feed
• 7:56 Cross‑Posting Personal and Business
• 9:00 Plan 30 Days: Focus and Flow
• 9:37 Free DIY Social Media Webinar

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:27

Hey, what's up, y'all? It's Shelby McFarlane, the Marketing Broker. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. I love to share my tips with you guys every single week on how to market your business through digital marketing or old school marketing or maybe a little bit of leadership stuff or entrepreneur. You know, you never know exactly what I'm gonna bring out. Today we are going to talk about something interesting and a little bit flash to my past kind of type thing. Um, this morning my daughter put on a bracelet. It was yellow day at school. It's been like spirit week all week, and I love to wear bracelets too. Um, but something you don't know about me is I kind of have like sensory issues. Um, people want to blame it on ADHD, ADD. I don't really know what it is, but all I know is if you are constantly making a noise around me, clicking a pin or tapping your fingers or anything like that, I will literally go crazy. And if you um understand and can relate to that, so my condolences to you as well because I know how hard it is to live with this whatever condition this is. Um, but what was funny is I sent a picture of my daughter to the grandparent group because it's yellow day, and I was like, oh, don't forget to look at her bracelet, super cute. You know, she had to add a little bit of flair to her yellow day, and my mom reminded me of something that made me laugh so hard because I've forgotten that I had done this a few years ago. But my mom always wore bracelets and like earrings and stuff like that. And I remember one day we're sitting there outside and she's talking, and my mom, as you can tell, I do too, if you're watching this on video, I talk with my hands, but my mom talks with her hands, and she's just really going at it and telling a story, and there's a few of us around listening and kind of laughing at it, and then all of a sudden I was just like, Hey mom, uh, I have not seen those bracelets before. Like, can I try those on? And so she takes her bracelets off, and I just sat them on the table in front of us, and she goes, What are you doing? I thought you wanted to like look at them. I was like, No, her bracelets were like jingling really loud and like hitting each other, and she had all these charms on it, and I was like going crazy because I could not focus on her story because all I could hear were her bracelets, and it was just like, ah, I had all this stuff in my head, like it was very, very distracting. And so, as she reminded me of that this morning, I thought, you know what? A good podcast episode would be talking about the distracting content that people put out there that's not a part of their strategic plan, or it's not helping their goal in the long run of social media, and so when I'm talking about consistency of content on social media, I'm talking a max of three posts per week when we're talking about stagnant posts. If you've listened to any of my other content podcasts, then you understand how I am always talking about being consistent online, but when we're consistent, we want to make sure we're also strategic. So we don't want all of this outside uh content posts, we don't want all this noise to distract what we are actually trying to tell our audience and what we're trying to engage them on and what we're trying to sell them on. Just like my mom when she's trying to sell us on this story that she's telling us, and and I can't even focus on her because all I'm thinking about is the bracelets, and all I'm hearing is the bracelet. And another example of that was at an event last week. I went with my best friend to a gala and the people in the audience were talking while the speakers were talking, and so I could not hear the speaker because the people around us were talking to each other. First of all, side note, super rude. I almost stood up and said something because I was like, y'all are being extremely disrespectful of the speakers on the stage. I know you guys can hear them, you've looked at them, you've glanced at them, and yet you still continue to talk. And there was just so much outside noise that I honestly could not sit here and tell you, oh, this is what the speaker told us, or oh, this is what they were raising money for because I couldn't hear them from the outside noise of everybody else. So when you're doing your content strategy, I want you to think like, okay, these are my selling posts, these are my engaging posts, these are the things that I'm gonna educate people on, and then I want you to consistently post those. Now, when we're when we're talking about the outside noise of content posting, I'm talking about clustering your feed with post. I had an ex-client of mine that was adamant about posting every single day, multiple times a day, on her feed. So her people couldn't even see anything else on social media except for her. And you're like, wait, isn't that like what you're supposed to do? Like, isn't that a good thing? No, no, it's not a good thing. Because then her numbers were dropping, but their numbers were dropping because people were getting annoyed. We don't want to annoy people, right? We want to add value, we want to like jump in their timeline and give them something funny or like valuable or what can they take with them for the rest of the day. We don't want to be annoying, we don't want to cause any unfollowers because we are on there multiple times a day all day. I believe this is why Meta had created stories. Your story for your business can be as busy as you want. If you are someone that's like, I want to stay on social media, okay, great. Well, stay on social media and be as busy as you want to on your story because people like to see that. They are tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. So it needs to be like short little snippets of things that you're doing or pictures or videos or something like that, because people are going very fast on your stories. But that is more interacting. That's where the busyness needs to take place, is on your story, not on your feed. Focus on educating, inspiring, adding value, um, and even a few selling posts on there too, on your actual feed, so that way you can plan those out accordingly, and then all of your extra stuff just flows right through your story. Because we don't want to distract people from our main point on social media. We don't want to distract them from why they are on your page, we don't want to distract them from buying from you, right? We want to keep them on point, we want to keep them in the flow of what we're planning, keep them in the flow of the strategy, and then put everything else in your story. If you're someone that hasn't taken advantage of your story yet, I highly recommend it. I get a lot of interaction on my personal story and my business story when I'm posting on it. I'll also cross-post because I am the business owner, and so being the business owner, I will cross-post with my personal and professional uh story. So I'll post uh installing graphics on my personal story, but then I'm tagging marketing broker, and then I'm being able to share it back and forth from marketing broker to boss babe Shelby. And then I'm also doing that on my post. So any kind of personal post that I'm putting out on social media, I usually always tag marketing broker when it has to do with something with like business, right? Like it could just be like, um, yesterday I said I wanted to throw my computer out the window, but instead I went on a three-mile walk, and it was like the marketing broker out here doing her thing for other people, but sometimes technology just doesn't add up, or sometimes technology doesn't, I think, like cooperate. And so I did tag marketing broker on that. So you can do a little bit of co-marketing with each other, like with your personal and your business, but we want to keep that busyness out of your actual feed of your business profile. So when you're thinking about your content for the next week or 30 days, let's really hone in on your strategy, let's do some educating, adding value. I want you to sell a few times. Um, and then I want you to really dive deep into your story and creating that busyness, creating the noise in your story because that's where it belongs. Just like the noise of my mom's bracelets belonged right there on the table. And then I could focus on what she was actually saying to me, what the story was about, and then I could enjoy it and understand the value that she was giving me in that story. If you need help with this, you can always go to my website. I have a free webinar you can download. It's all about DIY social media. I dive deeper into content creation and how to actually strategize and create your plan for social media for your business. Alright, guys, I'll catch you on the next one.