Ep. 61: Introducing the Social Slowdown Challenge

Meg Casebolt  0:01  
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 lipsync send to cold DMS, run ads or be available 24/7. Let’s get started. Hello, friends, I am interrupting our regularly scheduled interviews where I speak with a guest about how they’re approaching social media and then I talk at you. And instead, I want to take an opportunity to invite you to a free challenge that we’re running next week. If you’re listening to this live, where we can actually talk to each other, you can sign up for this challenge over at social slowdown.com/challenge, we will make sure to put that link in the show notes. Let me talk a little bit about the approach that I want to take with these conversations, before I leave into some of the logistics. So first of all, I’m not going to tell you what to do. I can’t write I can’t tell you how to do your marketing. I’m not going to tell you to abandon social media. You know, because it’s the bane of existence. This is your life, this is your business. But what I can do is ask you some questions that can help to guide you to make your own decisions about what makes sense for you and for your business based on you know, your mental health needs, your time commitments. What are your values? What are your priorities for you, this might mean that you make the decision just to be more intentional about the time that you’re spending on social media, it might mean that you go cold turkey, it might mean that you continue to do exactly what you’re doing, but maybe you bet your time on it. So that way it doesn’t kind of loom over you in the same way that it is right now. This is an exploration of your relationship with these tools. It’s not ever meant to be shaming, or I don’t want to say instructional it’s not it’s an exploration moreso than a training. Okay. So with that in mind, here’s how it’s going to work. We’re going to have social slowdown challenge activities happening in two places. So the first one is right here in the podcast feed we are already listening, I’m going to share six episodes with prompts that you can listen to on your own time, you can consider them you can really, you know, take what makes sense to you and release the rest of it. The first one will start this Friday to sort of give you time to gather a little bit of data. And then the next will happen next week, which is January 23rd to 27th these podcast episodes will probably be I don’t know like 15 to 20 minutes long, it might might go a little longer. You guys know me at this point. I’m sort of like that Mark Twain quote, which is like I didn’t have time to write a short letter. So I wrote a long one instead. Not great at being concise over here. But hopefully, you know, you can glean what you need from these episodes. And that might be it for you. You might just want to listen to the podcast episodes. Think about yourself not need to be a part of the other half of us that’s totally okay. The other option is you can also choose to come join the conversations in our online community. This is not hosted in a Facebook group we use a tool called circle and we will have both forums style conversation so you can contribute when it makes sense to you you can you know pick and choose which of the prompts makes sense to you on a given day. We will be having a live conversations every day that week in zoom right at noon, Eastern so you know depending on your timezone, hopefully that will work for you. And you don’t have to come to all of those conversations, pick one or two drop in have a have a dialogue with us be part of a discussion. We’ll also have some worksheets and some checklists available to you. If that helps you to think through some of these prioritization conversations. Everything’s optional. But if you want to be in a space where this conversation is happening, come on over and join us social celadon.com/challenge. Now, that’s all happening live next week, which is January 20 to 27th if you’re hearing this after the challenge is over, that’s still okay. I know many people will come through and binge podcasts after you know these live things are happening. We will keep those podcasts live, you can still listen to the next few episodes, you can move through your own self guided exploration of these topics. And then after the challenge will decide what to do. I’m planning to record an episode with our community manager Sheena and we’ll record sort of a debrief of how the challenge went both how the structure of it works. but also what we learned from the live discussions and some of that community and dialogue that we’re having in those live conversations will also guide what future decisions we’re making about content. You know, what we’re hearing in those conversations is that a lot of people are working on or struggling with a specific topic that will lead to, you know, future episodes where we can explore that more. Or if people feel like, oh, I want to be able to re listen to this conversation, then we can release it as a podcast episode. So you may or may not miss that we may run this again, we may not right, I’m a big fan of gathering the data, looking at what comes out of it and using that data to make an informed decision. So I cannot guarantee that we will run this again if you missed it. But that’s okay. I’m sure we’ll find some other way to work together in the future. If this sounds interesting to you, make sure to subscribe to this feed. So that way you get those daily episodes next week, January 23, through 27th. And if you want to be a part of the community conversation, head on over to social slowdown.com/challenge where you can join our community and have a space to have this conversation. I look forward to seeing you there. And have a great day. 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 so 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.