I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to drive it home: you cannot rely on social media to promote your business! In this week’s episode, I’m speaking with Jenny Melrose about how why it’s important that you utilize email marketing and other platforms such as a podcast, YouTube channel, and your own website to market your business. We also discuss influencers, TikTok, and Instagram.

What you can expect from this episode:

  • Why you can’t rely on social media for marketing your business
  • How to get the most out of email marketing
  • Monetizing your blog (with ad networks and sponsorships)
  • Social media influencers: Are they oversharing?

About Jenny Melrose:

Jenny is a former reading specialist who “retired” from her teaching career when her blogging income far exceeded her salary. Through hard work and dedication, her lifestyle blog, The Melrose Family, became regularly sought out by nationally recognized brands such as Neutrogena, Smuckers, Glad, Costco, Stanley Steamer, Sara Lee, and many more. She is a content strategist who helps entrepreneurs better understand their messaging and unique position in the online space. Now, she’s combining her passion for teaching with her extensive experience of creating strategic content for online business owners via JennyMelrose.com and her podcast, Influencer Entrepreneurs with Jenny Melrose as well as her first book Influencer Entrepreneurs: The 4-Step Framework to Building Your Audience, Growing Your Business, and Making More Money Online. 

Read the full transcript

Jenny Melrose  0:00  
So you cannot build your entire business on the social media platforms need to have a website, a podcast, a YouTube channel, because it’s tied into Google need to have something that is yours an email list especially so that you can always have those people and have that audience that will continually come back to you and look to have their problem solved.

Meg Casebolt  0:23  
You’re listening to social slowdown, a podcast for entrepreneurs and micro businesses looking for sustainable marketing strategies without being dependent on social media. Social media is a double edged sword. It’s a wonderful way to stay connected. But it also can feel like an addictive obligation. And it’s even more complex for businesses, your audience might be right there, but you’ve got to fight with algorithms to maybe be seen by them. So whether you want to abandon social media altogether, or you just want to take a month off, it’s possible to have a thriving business without being dependent on social media. This podcast is all about finding creative, sustainable ways to engage with your audience without needing to lip sync, send to cold DMS, run ads or be available 24/7. Let’s get started. Hello, friends, welcome to the social slowdown podcast. You’ve got Meg here. And I am joined today by Jenny Melrose. Jenny, thank you so much for being here with me.

Jenny Melrose  1:19  
Thank you for having me on Meg, I’m excited to have this conversation.

Meg Casebolt  1:23  
We just did all of our kind of pre cheddar and realize that her husband and my brother were in the same high school class. So we have no idea when we book the recording. But it’s one of those things where you realize just how small this world is not just the online business world. But like the real world, y’all like it, you must take some time to talk to humans. Yes, it is crazy. So Jenny, tell us a little bit about you and your business. And you know what it is that you do in this crazy wild online world?

Jenny Melrose  1:55  
Yes, absolutely. So I started back I like to say back in the wild, wild west when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the internet. Exactly. I started back in 2010. And I started a lifestyle blog that then pivoted into a food blog called the Melrose family where I created quick and easy recipes and projects for busy parents on that site I built because I lost myself as a new mother was also an inner city school district teacher and needed something that was my own, and fell in love with the blogging world. Just being able to create and then being able to network and make connections with bloggers all around the world. And then came to understand that this can be a full time profession, it can be something that I’m able to monetize and able to support my family with. And back in 2015, I replaced my teacher salary of 75,000 and was able to retire from teaching at 35. We moved from New York down to Charlotte, North Carolina, and

Meg Casebolt  2:55  
definitely a lower cost of living there. That’s pretty nice. But Texas man,

Jenny Melrose  2:59  
yeah. The weather. That is what we were kind of like, Nope, we’re done. We’re not scared. We don’t enjoy this. It’s time to go somewhere warm.

Meg Casebolt  3:07  
I don’t know. It’s not as bad here as it was when we were growing up, though. Because climate change. It’s definitely not as snowy. But anyway, I understand what desire to leave for sure.

Jenny Melrose  3:16  
No, absolutely. But once we came down here and got around to the blogging world that I had left teaching, and was making a decent full time income, I started getting asked to speak at different conferences. And every time I would speak at a conference, I’d come home and there’d be hundreds of emails asking me specific questions about how did you do this? How did this work? So I started talking about sponsorships because that was how I primarily made my money as a blogger and influencer. And I created a course and then had to develop a whole new website because the Melrose family was not the same target audience as the anything that was about blogging, created Jenny melrose.com, created a podcast that went along with it, and then had programmatic services. And I used to do an in person event pre COVID. So it has developed into this winding road of never thinking that I would ever be able to stay home and work from home and do all the things and be able to support my family with this business. But it’s been an amazing journey.

Meg Casebolt  4:17  
I love that story. Especially because it started as like a passion project of let me share what are the things that I’m doing in my real life and especially in 2010 Like there was that sort of lifestyle blogging, that isn’t as common now. I think now that lifestyle approach to things has really gone to social media and it’s more important that you have Instagram followers or Instagram, you know, sponsored posts or Tik Tok is pretty big for that. Now, those are kind of the two platforms where those folks have moved and maybe like a little bit of Pinterest in there. But the blogging is not what it used to be. So talk to me about how you’re teaching people to do some of this now versus what you what you experienced 13 years ago when you started, how has the landscape shifted

Jenny Melrose  5:04  
gas. So blogging when I started in 2010, was let’s talk about what we ate today. And where we went and what we were, where it’s now you have to understand your positioning, what problem are you solving for your audience, and you need to stay in your lane within your area of expertise in solving that problem. So that’s why we don’t see as many lifestyle stock sites anymore because they it’s harder to rank for multiple topics that are all over the place with a lifestyle site, it makes more sense to niche down know what problem you solve for your audience, and then be able to do the keyword research and make sure that you’re creating content that is actually what people are looking for. Rather than for example, I created a love bug fruit cup post years ago that went viral on Pinterest. But I wasn’t getting any Google traffic. Well, because no one’s searching for lovebug fruit cups. They’re searching for non candy Valentine’s Day ideas, which is what it was. So once I was able to realize that and understand keyword research and SEO, it made a huge difference in my traffic and what I became known for by Google, so it was sending the right target audience to me, the people whose problems I knew I could solve,

Meg Casebolt  6:21  
totally. And like that understanding of, here’s the thing that I am going to call it as the creator. And that people who are seeing it show up in their feeds can recognize as a solution to a problem, but they don’t know how to seek out the solution to that problem using those terms. And therefore I have to adjust the way that I talk about things. Yes, absolutely. And then obviously, for me, I’m like, Okay, now we need to create a roundup post that has like the 10 best non candy alternatives to Valentine’s Day presents for your kid. And then it’ll have that listed as number one, and maybe another thing that you have listed as number two, but then you can also reach out to other bloggers and get their input on it. So that way they’re sharing it with their audiences. And there it really is, especially in the blogging world. There’s a really strong collaborative approach to these things where you’re supporting other people, you’re guiding other people, maybe less so than it used to be. But that was one of the things I always loved about bloggers, is you were creating this free content, you were collaborating with other people who are creative, who shared your values, who were creating similarly valuable things for their audience. And then by getting traffic to each other’s websites, you were not just supporting the content, but you were helping each other get paid. Like that’s something people don’t understand about influencers, especially as they are now mostly moved on to social media, you don’t get paid by Instagram, you get. But if you have traffic coming into your blog, and you have, you know, Adsense or media vine or zoic, or one of those running on it, traffic to your blog pays your bills.

Jenny Melrose  7:55  
absolutely does. Yes. And for many of those bloggers, they see 1000s of dollars just from traffic because of ad networks like media, Vine and ad Thrive especially.

Meg Casebolt  8:06  
And if you move everything onto social media, then you instead of just having traffic be paying your bills, you go back into what you were just talking about with sponsorships. So talk to you about how you either did your sponsorship packages still do your sponsorship packages? Or like how you are now teaching people to do sponsorships and how that’s changed in the rise of tic tac? Yes.

Jenny Melrose  8:31  
So I think that one of the most important things that I always try to tell people is sitting it sounds weird when you’re talking about sponsorships. But to build your business on rented property, we have to understand that Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest Tiktok, we just saw tick tock CEO in front of Congress about potentially being banned. So you cannot build your entire business on the social media platforms need to have a website, a podcast, a YouTube channel, because it’s tied into Google need to have something that is yours an email list especially so that you can always have those people and be able to have that audience that will continually come back to you and look to have their problem solved. Now when it goes towards creating a package, I teach that you create a package price or sponsored package price of what you are going to deliver. As a blogger. One of the most important assets that you have is your website. Yes, they still want social media. But I have bloggers that only pitch, a blog post and their email list. And they’re still charging 20 505,000 depending upon how large how many page views they see in a 30 day period, especially if they can go into Google Search Console and be able to say this is what I rank for. These are the key words and this is what I’m going to do for you. I’m going to create a keyword research SEO post where I can through a link with previous content that I am already ranking for. So they know they’re going to get the long tail of facts of the Google search traffic. And it’s going to continue. Not unlike Instagram, Tik Tok, where it’s quick and done, we have a trend come through, you get picked up for maybe a week, two weeks, depending upon the platform. And

Meg Casebolt  10:23  
how lucky are you if you get picked up on tick tock for a week instead of an hour,

Jenny Melrose  10:27  
depending upon what time and when this actually comes out to publish, who knows what the algorithm will be like. And because of that, that’s why blogging is still so relevant, as well as that email list, that email list is very valuable, you just have to be able to tell them the numbers, the engagement, so that if you don’t understand your numbers, that would be the first place I would go like, get into your analytics, understand it, look at your email, what’s your open rate, what’s your click rate, and then go and look at social media, and start to understand what your engagement looks like on each of the separate platforms. So that when you put together a package, you offer the consistent longtail effects of a blog post or podcast episode, whatever it might be. And then social media that comes off of that, as well as an email to your list. And that package is one price, you’re not telling them, I charge this for a blog post, and I charge this for an Instagram and I charge this, this and this, you give them a package price, because when they come back to you, they’re going to cut you in half, that is their job. So this way, you can negotiate and say, okay, half dead, I’m taking out my instagram reel and take out my tick tock I’m taking, you start taking out the pieces so that you’re at a price that you’re comfortable with. And you just have to you can know yourself what you would individually charge for certain things. But you do not tell them what you are charging, you get a package and then be able to pull it so that it’s still a worthwhile project for you. Or I

Meg Casebolt  11:55  
mean, if you’re in that situation, I would even say create if they come back, and they say we have a budget of half of what you just pitched us have one that is this is the long term and then have another one that’s like this is the rapid effect. And let them choose which they want from you and see what the values are from your sponsors is it I want to have long, slow traffic or I want to have fast, you know, over Trump. And that might be a really interesting piece of data too. I love that you started with like, go look at your analytics, go look at your search console. This is something that I feel like I’m always preaching not maybe not even necessarily on this podcast. But in the SEO agency, I’m always talking about Google Search Console. And I think that people think they have to have a certain amount of traffic for it to be relevant to them that like, oh, well, once I get real traffic, then I’ll learn my analytics. But like, how can you know if it’s getting better? Or how can you know what’s working? If you’re not actually, you know, going and looking and setting those benchmarks? So it’s not even like, what’s the value to an outsider of that traffic? For a lot of us, it doesn’t even have to be something that we’re pitching it can be How am I improving where my people coming from? If they’re coming from social, then, you know, maybe I want to spend more time on there. But often what what I’m hearing from a lot of my guests is like, traffic isn’t getting click throughs from social, maybe a place where I’m getting relevance and brand awareness, but it’s not leading to sales. So Johnny, the reason I bring that up is I want to hear about for your education side of your business, not the blogging side so much but like when you’re teaching other people to do this, how are those new people hearing about you? How are they finding you? Is it your social media? Is it your podcast? Is it your speaking events? Is it referral traffic? Like how do the best leaves discovered Jenny Melrose

Jenny Melrose  13:46  
for being the podcast, but the reason that it’s the podcast is because I repurpose that content? I don’t just create a podcast episode and prior to creating the podcast episode, I do keyword research, whether it’s me doing my own episode, or if I have a guest on I check in see what are we going to talk about? What did they ask to speak on, and then create the questions based upon what Google is telling me. People want to know about that. From there, that once I have the interview, we then take that and it gets turned into a blog post that is already keyword research so that we can SEO it and be able to get it in front of Google hopefully quicker and start to rank for those key terms. Then from there, we will take it and make sure that it’s promoted to my email list, as well as embed within the post opt ins that are relevant to the content that we’re talking about. So I can continue to grow my list with people that are coming from Google, and then be able to use social media. We don’t create social media to just have it be its own separate piece of content. We create social media posts that are based upon what we’re already teaching on the podcast in the blog post. So that it’s a consistent message for Every one. Yes, you know, I

Meg Casebolt  15:02  
love that because it’s like if you start from the long tail effects, and then you roll it into the shorter term promotions, you can get, you can almost like double dip on your content and a lot of ways. And then if you decide like, I want to take a couple of weeks off this summer, I’m gonna go rerun those podcasts, you already have everything ready to go to promote it on social and let’s be serious, like half the more than half your audience didn’t listen to it the first time. Right, so you might as well send it back out again and do like kind of a best of Roundup?

Jenny Melrose  15:32  
Yes, no, absolutely, I think the ability to then have that email list as well to be able to put new and old content especially back in front of them, I’ve had my podcast for six years. So it’s over 350 episodes. So being able to go back into the archives on something that is still relevant and put it back in front of them is huge. It gives me the ability to be able to email my list three times a week, and for them to not even notice. I have clients that said we you’re emailing me three times a week, and I’m like, Yep, it’s because you don’t notice because you’re just you’re clicking on the relevant email that that works for you, wherever you are in your journey, within my customer journey of trying to get to a point maybe where they’re starting off blogging all the way to the end of being able to scale and hire team and put in place SOPs in order to become more of a CEO of their business.

Meg Casebolt  16:25  
All right, talk to me about that email marketing, because now I’m like, Oh, I have now I’m like thinking of ideas of ways that I all year long I’ve been going I need to do more email marketing. But there is always even though I’ve had months where I am literally sending one email a day and seeing my open rates stay consistent, there’s still always that little bit of imposter complex happening in the back of your head of like, if I keep sending emails, they’re all going to unsubscribe, and I’ll have nobody on my list. And I’ll just blown all this time building this email list. And but we forget that like if you just sit on an email list, it’s not doing you any good either, like growing your email list, if you’re not going to email them is not worth the cost of the software that you’re paying. So how do you how did you decide on three emails a week? And how do you choose what goes into each of them?

Jenny Melrose  17:09  
Yes. So I hired an email marketing coach couple years ago that had said to be, you need to email three times a week. And it was the same thing. No way.

Meg Casebolt  17:18  
The fear, right, I met people who broke a sweat hearing you say three times a week.

Jenny Melrose  17:24  
And I think too at that time, I was kind of like unsubscribes don’t bother me, because I don’t want to pay for them to send my list Anyways, if they’re never going to take action on anything, so I’m fine with unsubscribe. So that wasn’t my issue was just Holy crap. That seems like a lot of emails. And I did it for three weeks sending three emails a week where I was sending them to old podcast episodes and new podcast episodes. And I was sitting in a conference on and open up my laptop and went to go look at my downloads, and someone was up on stage speaking and I blurted out, holy cow cussing or not, so I’m not gonna say it out loud sitting at the table, my downloads had increased by 400%. Holy shit.

Meg Casebolt  18:07  
It’s fine. It was worth it

Jenny Melrose  18:12  
for 400% It was insane. When I saw that I was like, Yep, I do not care. We’re making this a thing. And I have stuck with it ever since. It makes it easier, honestly, to be able to put out sales emails, because I’m already emailing three times a week. And if I’m going to do a sales sequence or a launch, they’re gonna get multiple emails in that week, it’s only going to be on that sale sequence. I won’t be putting in my normal three. But they’re not as like, whoa, why is she in my inbox so much just because she has a launch? Already, I have been giving them free content the entire time with those three emails that they’ve become used to.

Meg Casebolt  18:57  
And how much of the content that you’re putting into those three emails a week is new every week and how much of it is like part of a an automation sequence or something that you’re repurposing hotly, you know how much is is needing to be created on a regular basis?

Jenny Melrose  19:12  
Yes. So here’s the thing I think that people have to understand is that an email to your list does not need to be a newsletter. It does not need to take you two hours to write one email. It takes me 10 minutes to write three emails a week to my list. 10 minutes. That’s it. So my emails are short and sweet. I write maybe five six sentences I’ve hit ask them a question that hits on the pain point that the episode is going to solve. I get them the link to be able to go to the episode. And then I sign off. Sometimes there’ll be a PS for an upcoming training that’s being done free or for a summit or whatever it might be. But it’s a short email, like I’m writing to a friend never include images, because I don’t want to get hit up in the Gmail algorithm. I don’t want to end up in the promotions tab. I want to end up in their main tab are they’re going to be able to open. So with the content I am normally, I’m not giving them tips in my email, I am just saying here’s, do you have this problem you do well then to go listen to this episode. So normally, we are putting out one new episode a week for podcast episodes, but I’m also on other shows. So I will have a new episode at least once a week, we will have normally someone else’s that I’ve been a guest on. And I’ll try to get back in front of them to make sure that I’m promoting it. And then I will go into my archives for something relevant. And that is also in between when I am doing free trainings or a free event or promoting a summit for others that I am maybe a part of or a bundle. So the emails normally will have at least one piece of new content, and then normally just something else I’m able to add in for those other two days.

Meg Casebolt  20:58  
It’s such an easy system. Yes. And that like we just, we we overcomplicate everything that we do.

Jenny Melrose  21:07  
Yeah, and I just keep everything. So I’m a Google girl, I love being able to just go into Google and have everything in my folders. So everything is either a Google sheet or google doc every and everything is embedded within where it needs to be. And I just have a Google Sheet. That’s my master editorial email calendar. And I put in the dates Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that’s when I email my people. And I make sure that I am ahead so that if something does come up with my kids, where I need to take off like,

Meg Casebolt  21:38  
that never happens to parents know, exactly.

Jenny Melrose  21:42  
are already scheduled and ready to go see them at least a week ahead of what needs to come out. And then same thing with my podcast. I am actually your episode is going to come out I want to say the end of September. Like that’s how far and we’re recording in March? Yes. Because I know I don’t want to record over the summer when my kids are home because it is too difficult. And it stresses me out. So I just tried to get as head as I possibly can.

Meg Casebolt  22:11  
That’s really impressive. So when I see your notes up here that I’m Episode 359, I’m like, Whoa, like I looked at what your number was in iTunes. Because y’all were recording my episode for her podcast right after we finished recording this one. And I think this will go live in August, I’m about a month ahead. And I felt like that was good. But knowing that you’re six months ahead, that’s just you know, and especially, here’s the secret to that is, you know your brand, you know your audience. Yes, you know, what fits. And you know, like when you need to record solo episodes to fill in gaps, or what you want to talk about in a given month, or like just having that clear understanding of, yes, this is a good fit. It makes it so much easier to be able to just plan ahead and have things just ready to go when they’re ready to go. Like, that’s such a refreshing approach.

Jenny Melrose  23:00  
Yes, and I think we’re talking about it from the podcast standpoint. But you can also do it from the bot blogging standpoint of having a content calendar and knowing what those core rock pieces of content are going to be throughout the month. My clients that I work with, I push them to get at least a month ahead, because most of them are moms and most of them saw what happened during COVID. Like, you do not want to be stuck and trying to just reel around and get whatever out there. So we try to like make sure they have a content calendar and are getting the content ready to go a month ahead.

Meg Casebolt  23:33  
And then how for you. Does social media play into the way that you’re promoting your content? Aside from you know, having the podcast episodes promoting on social? Do you feel like you still see people who are tracking you only on social? I know you’re creating that sort of downstream repurposed content? Do you see people engaging with it? Or never listening to the podcast and only seeing the Instagram rails? Like, how’s that work for you personally?

Jenny Melrose  24:01  
Yes, so I’ve gone through stages, with social media as far as especially Instagram, in particular, in Facebook as well, where I was on Instagram, I was doing the things I was posting every single day making sure that my content was there. I was creating reels every other day. And I got to a point where I got burnt out. And it also for me, wasn’t the right the the people that were coming from there the audience the leads it they needed more time to engage with me they weren’t as valuable as someone that was listening to me on my podcast. So for me social media, honestly what I use, especially for Instagram, I will use I tell them on my podcast to DM me. So I’m in my DMs I’m the only when they’re answering any questions that they have. And they know that that’s the fastest way to actually get in contact with me. And then I do stories. I honestly haven’t posted to my Instagram account. in over a year and a half, you mean yes to the grid to reels. Only thing I have done is stories and a year and a half on Instagram. My followers have continued to go up not substantially. But I was always growing at a snail’s pace anyways, over there as far as the content. And my thought process is always, you have to know where your people are. Where are your people engaging with that type of content in my people are not going to Instagram to learn how to blog and email market. They’re going to Google, they’re going to podcasts. So I only have so much bandwidth, I’m going to spend my time making sure that they get the valuable content they need for the blog, the podcasts and my email. That’s where my people are, that’s where they actually turn into clients and customers. So for me, and I know that sounds weird, especially as a former blogger that had a food blog, even there, if your audience is not there, I see so many people talking about Tik Tok. But if your audience is 40 and above, they may not be going there to consume that type of content on Tik Tok. I’m not going there. For any store, I don’t want to know about health. I’m going there to watch funny cat videos and people getting scared to zone out. That’s how I use it. So you have to know how your people are actually consuming their content. It can like everybody, you’ll say, oh, but it gives you the engagement and they get to know your brand. And they get to understand you better. My voice and the way that I talk gives you plenty of ideas about my brand. So for me, it doesn’t necessarily that doesn’t turn into it. And I have had a lot of clients that yes, they will continue to post over there. But the majority of their sponsorships, their products being sold are all coming from the blog and their email list.

Meg Casebolt  26:53  
Yeah, I have a lot of clients who have tic TOCs accounts, but they basically are using what they’re putting on YouTube shorts, because their audience is looking on YouTube, and then they sort of follow along on tick tock while they’re already there. But I’m the same as you like, I don’t even have a tick tock account. But the only things that I ever watch on Tik Tok are related to either ADHD or romance novels, like I don’t even as far as I’m concerned, there is no business opportunity there. Aside from like, actually just read this article today it was from well, by the time this airs, that won’t be today anymore, obviously. But it was about how much money is being spent on tick tock sponsorships, especially for book recommendations and how now people are taking book recommendations less seriously from tick tock because it has become so monetized. And I think that there’s something there too about if you have created the content on your own content platform, whether that’s you know, a podcast or your own YouTube video or your own blog, even if you do have a sponsorship package for it, people know what they’re getting, you are required to disclose that you have been paid for that. Whereas if you’re on a social media platform, the disclosures are a little bit less clear. And people aren’t paying as close attention. So your credibility is and people you know, the content disappear so quickly, that it’s not like the Federal Trade Commission can come down and be like, well, that tick tock that disappeared six months ago, we’re gonna pull it off. So I think that there is a certain amount that the speed at which that content is produced and distributed, makes it less authoritative. Versus if you have a podcast episode reviewing something and talking about a specific product that you’re sponsoring or, you know, something along those lines, there’s, there’s a level of trust that goes into that when you have that disclosure. Or you say, Hey, I wasn’t paid for this review, I just really liked this product. You have the time in those content platform options, to have the full conversation of why versus these quick little sound bites, I

Jenny Melrose  29:01  
guess this kind of takes it in its different direction. But as a parent, anytime people talk about tick tock and how quickly things go away, that scares the crap out of me that my kids can quickly see something and I won’t be able to find it and go through it. And I think that’s something also for us to keep in mind. Because reason I did my own social detox from social media was because I was getting triggered. I was noticing that certain posts were bothering me for whatever reasons it was my own personal hang ups and whatever it was at that time. But that was why I did my detox was because I noticed that it was bothering me. And I needed to get off the platform and understand where my boundaries needed to be. And I then looked at six months before we had been doing social consistently to six months after and it didn’t impact my business at all. So it was kind of like I’m fine with that. So.

Meg Casebolt  30:01  
And I think when you’re on the platforms, and you’re using that as your primary means of communication with people versus an option, like email marketing, which is just as time sensitive, you’re expected to perform with a certain turnaround time when current events happen. I think about a couple of years ago, with Black Lives Matter with George Floyd, like, Oh, you have to put up the black square in solidarity and like, the expectation of performance is very different than let me sit down and really have a conversation with people or talk about how this is deeply influencing me or, you know, it’s like, it’s so it can be so performative that it’s not authentic anymore. And like the rainbow washing around pride, like there’s so much that is expected of you on those platforms that may or may not actually be something that’s part of your brand values. I don’t know where the question isn’t here. I’m just sort of thinking out loud about like, how how, influencers in particular, because that’s part of your branding, is this influencer entrepreneurs and influencer marketing are expected to behave in certain spaces. And your approach to it is not the norm.

Jenny Melrose  31:17  
No. And it’s often kind of I don’t get pushback from anyone else. But a lot of times, my audience that is drawn to me, are the bloggers, because they’re like, Yes, I don’t want to do this social media, I don’t want to have to be there and do the things. And I think you’re right, there was a lot, especially when you talked about during COVID. And Black Lives Matters. There was an I honestly, that was what triggered me, that was part of my time, right down in there, because I saw people doing things that putting up things in St. I did not want to know their political theories, because it just was not in line. And that’s a whole nother topic. I just think that what has happened on social media is people are crossing lines, you will see people crying with their husband, because they’re getting separated and getting a divorce. And they’re divulging all of this in Instagram, real that not okay, like it’s just there’s sure you get there has to be lines and my lines being having grown up like in throughout the 80s my lines are very kind of penciled in, and I’m gonna stay in my lane as far as what I’m willing to share with others. And when I’m not, and I think I felt like I was hiding things. But when in reality was it was still things that I was dealing through. It was things I was working through and trying to share it and talk about it on social media to do all the trends and what everyone else was doing was not comfortable for me. So it did make sense to be able to go Hold on. Let’s take a look at what is actually impacting my audience. Where am I best, and I’m a former teacher, I can teach you just about anything and to anyone, because that’s my skill set. Yeah.

Meg Casebolt  33:08  
And I love what you said also about like, you can be an influencer without needing to be just airing all of your dirty laundry. And it sounds like you have a lot of like introvert influencers where people want to have an impact, they want to generate more reach, they want to get in front of a bigger audience. But they don’t want to have to show up at a specific time on a specific platform in a specific way respond to the trends. Instead, they can choose how they want to engage whatever their content platform of choice is, and then double down on something that works for their energy levels. I talked to a lot of people who have chronic illnesses. And it’s like, some days, I feel great, and I can go batch right, you know, 20 blog posts, or I can record six, I had I had a day where I recorded 17 YouTube videos in a day. And then the next day, I had no energy left in my body, right like knowing what our energy levels are. Knowing that I’m good days, we can do more and on like less energetically charged days we can ease off or like you said, you know, something comes up with your kids, but you’re already ahead by a month, two months. It doesn’t have to always go live and sure you can pre record your social media so that way it gets like siphoned out in the same way that you would for pre scheduling things. But there’s something just so refreshing about being able to not have to show up on time and be introverted and use your energy in a way that feels good to you.

Jenny Melrose  34:35  
No, absolutely. And I do I think I always like my book is called influencer entrepreneurs. My podcast is called influencer entrepreneurs because I would run into influencers and bloggers that saw themselves as just that. And they didn’t understand that they needed to treat what they were doing like a business, which is the entrepreneur side. You can’t Just put your head in the sand and not be able to know your pricing and understand the marketing behind longtail key effects of creating content. And I chose influencer entrepreneur because no matter what it is that you are doing, whether you own a brick and mortar or you are writing copy for a website, you become an influencer entrepreneur, you are influencing others to do something. And that’s exactly what it’s all about. We all do that in our daily lives with our friends and our family members when we’re talking about certain things that we love and that we use. And then you do that through your business, by the way that you create content and put it out there. Yeah, absolutely.

Meg Casebolt  35:41  
So if people want to hear more about you, obviously, we’re going to send them since their podcast listeners, we’re going to send them to go check out the influencer entrepreneur podcast, y’all apparently, you could hear me on this in like six months, because God is so on top of her shit. In the meantime, we’ll make sure to include a link to the podcast in the show notes. Where else can people find out about you? What do you have that they would appreciate?

Jenny Melrose  36:05  
Yes, so I actually have a workbook that walks you through my pack framework, which is positioning authenticity, competence and kindness. And regardless of your business and how you are set up online, that workbook can walk you through making sure that you understand how to involve that framework in all that you do. It actually coordinates also with my book, you can go to Jenny Melrose forward slash book, and the free workbook is on that page as well as if you feel like you want the whole book and you want to really know what I’m talking about and all my crazy teacher examples. You can grab that there otherwise Instagram if you have a question. My Instagram is on at Jenny underscore Melrose and I’m happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Meg Casebolt  36:47  
Awesome. Thank you so much for your generosity of time and recommendations. And yeah, thanks so much for being here, Tony.

Jenny Melrose  36:54  
Of course. Thank you for having me Mac.

Meg Casebolt  36:58  
Thank you so much for listening to the social slowdown podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or come on over to social slowdown.com and sign up for our email list. You never miss an episode. We’d also love if you could write a review to help other small business owners find the show you can head over to social slowdown.com/review Or grab that link in our show notes for easy access. We’ll be back soon with more tips to help you market your business without being beholden to social media. Talk to you then

Please forgive any typos, as this transcript was automatically generated by Otter.ai

influencers and email marketing with jenny melrose: podcast episode pinterest pin