Marketing Happy Hour - Nurturing Your Audience with Weekly Content | Les Alfred of Balanced Black Girl

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, Les. How are you? Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. I am doing well. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. We're so stoked to get into your experience. But before we do, we have to ask you what's in your glass this morning. What are you sipping on or what do you just enjoy sipping on on a regular basis? Well, in true fashion, I never have just one beverage. So I currently have a tumbler that has water and electrolytes in it. And then I also have coffee, always multiple beverages at once. Oh my gosh, same. And also Cassie the same exact way. She's always saying that she has like two

Starting point is 00:00:37 or three beverages at a time. So you guys are kindred spirits. Maybe it's, you know, something to do with loving marketing or whatever. But I would just love to hear, you know, something to do with loving marketing or whatever. But I would just love to hear, you know, you recently stepped away from your full-time role with HubSpot to pursue building your business and congratulations on that. That's exciting. What steps did you kind of take to make that decision? Yeah, you know, it had been, it had been a long time coming. Frankly, from the beginning of my content journey, it was always my goal to do it full time. And I mean, I started creating content back in 2014. So it was like a really long time coming. But that was always ultimately my goal. And even though the mediums and the platforms changed, I knew that I really wanted to have my own platform and create my own content. And so when I shifted from blogging to podcasting in 2018, I felt like I really found my groove in terms of my business and the community I was able to build around it. And it just, it got to the point where I

Starting point is 00:01:41 just was unable to do both and continuing to hold on to my full-time job was hindering the growth of the business. And I just had to make that tough call. Absolutely. And I'm just curious to hear if you have any encouragement or tips for those corporate professionals out there who are looking to eventually leave their nine to five to build their own business and kind of pursue their own dreams. Yeah. Well, as I just mentioned, it took me 10 years, I think we see a lot of stories where people have one viral video, and then immediately they go full time. And that's just that. And I love that for them. And that's not the case for everybody. It often takes a lot of time, a lot of trial and error to figure out how to either build a business, build a brand that you

Starting point is 00:02:26 can gain traction with. And so many points, I was so frustrated with how long it was taking. And I felt so embarrassed. So many of my friends who I started creating content with years ago, went full time in 2017, 2018, and I always still had to work. And I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment around that and wanted to quit so many times, but just stuck to work. And I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment around that and wanted to quit so many times, but just stuck with it. So I think if it's taking you longer than you feel like it should, it's okay. It's taken me 10 years and I'm just, just starting right now. Yeah. I am a firm believer personally. It's really not too late to start. And I think we're in this age of entrepreneurship and everyone wants to be

Starting point is 00:03:05 an entrepreneur, which is awesome. But you're right. There's kind of different timelines for different people and different circumstances. But I'm curious too, you know, I tell people all the time, I feel like there's a lot to learn in corporate that you can apply to your business. So I think while we feel like we have to make that jump super quick, there's a lot that we can be learning to prepare us for that. So I'm curious your experience of that and what you've kind of taken away from your nine to five that you're applying to your business. Oh, so much. And I mean, I, you know, entered the corporate world in 2011. So I had 13 years of corporate experience. It was a long career and a lot of different jobs.

Starting point is 00:03:45 And I am grateful that I did have corporate experience before going into full-time entrepreneurship. And I think not, I don't want to speak in absolutes and say everybody needs that, but I think most people do. I think it's going to be really hard to immediately go from school to entrepreneurship if you don't have any professional experience, because in corporate settings, that is where you develop business acumen. That is where you develop professional maturity. That is where you learn to communicate like a professional. You have the opportunity to manage a team. There's so much learning and development opportunities on the company's dime where you can go to conferences, you can get degrees, you can take courses to help you be a better business person. And so I think

Starting point is 00:04:23 starting your career off in a corporate setting and kind of getting as much as you can out of it before launching into entrepreneurship could be really valuable. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. Well, so let's kind of shift and talk about your brand that you've built, Balanced Black Girls. So you've experienced specifically with your podcast, just amazing growth over time. And just curious if you can share insights into your content strategy and how you've amplified diverse voices and wellness. Yeah. So my main platform is my podcast, Balance Black Girl. And the thing about podcasting is it's a really difficult medium to grow in because with podcasting, you don't have an algorithm helping you like you do on social media.

Starting point is 00:05:11 You don't have a very good search engine behind you like you do if you have a blog or even on YouTube. It's a really powerful search engine. With podcasting, you have to be super consistent. And growth with podcasting is almost entirely word of mouth. That is how people actually tap in and listen to podcasts. Even if you see a viral clip of a podcast online, unless it's something that has like a lot of draw or a lot of intrigue, very rarely do people actually go listen to the full interview. They just engage with the viral clip. And so it's really, for me, been all about nurturing the listeners I had, even when I had very few, being really consistent, showing up and serving them and having them be the evangelist to really

Starting point is 00:05:52 help me grow the podcast. Because we tend to listen to podcasts if our friend sends us one and says, hey, we were just talking about this, listen to this. We're so much more likely to listen to it than if we see a viral clip on TikTok, then we have to leave TikTok, go to Spotify or Apple podcasts and figure out the name of the episode and search for it. People don't do that, but people will listen to what their friends send them. So my biggest thing has just been serving the listeners I had, even when it was just a few people, because they've really helped me grow. Yeah, that's so important. We always talk about, you know, nurturing your community and strategies to do that. And one of those strategies too, is a newsletter. So you have one called mirror notes. Do you have any tips for crafting an

Starting point is 00:06:37 engaging newsletter, you know, coming up with new content every, you know, week or whatever the cadence is that you're sending out your newsletter, because I know a lot of people can get stuck and kind of think through trying to think through what to talk about every week or whenever you're sending out a newsletter. Definitely. I mean, my biggest goal with my newsletter, and I do send it out every week, I send it out every Wednesday and I have new episodes of my podcast come out every Tuesday. So really, my biggest goal is like to get the podcast directly in people's inboxes in case they didn't see, you know, a post on social or they haven't been in their podcast app yet. And they didn't see the new episode come up. It's my way

Starting point is 00:07:12 to like directly get it in front of people in a way that I have control over. And over time, I've also shifted the content quite a bit just to add little anecdotes that people couldn't get anywhere else, even if they follow me on social media or read the blog or listen to the podcast, there's always little nuggets that I put in the newsletter that people couldn't get anywhere else so that they feel like it's almost like a little love note that I'm writing them every week. And there's that value that they can keep coming back to, whether it's something that I'm loving or if there was inspiration behind a podcast episode or how I've been applying what we talk about on the podcast to my life, it's kind of that next step that makes that content a little bit more real, but I'm not

Starting point is 00:07:53 reinventing the wheel. It's often content that just expands upon what we're doing on the podcast and then getting that in front of people each week. Yeah, for sure. I'm curious too, you know, with both the podcast and the newsletter, I know specifically with podcasts, I think it's like 44% of podcasts don't get past episode three or something like that. And so pod fade is very much real. And I think so is newsletter fade. And so is content fade. You know, there's all these different mediums that we're having to create on. And I think sometimes we get burnt out from that. So I'm curious if you have any encouragement to creators who are pumping out a lot of content to

Starting point is 00:08:31 keep going, even though it does become a lot of work, it is hard. What would you say to them about that? I love that question. I would say the biggest thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. I think a lot of people get really overwhelmed because they're doing too many things at once. And it's all something totally different. For me, my podcast is my North Star and almost all my other content supports the podcast. So yes, I have a YouTube channel, but the YouTube channel is video episodes of the podcast. I'm not up there creating day in my life vlogs that would take me hours to film and edit because I can't be consistent with that. And that's also a different goal. My goal is to get people to listen to my podcast with their visual and they would rather

Starting point is 00:09:14 watch, then I can use that other platform to do that. But I'm not trying to build an audience that wants to watch me film target vlogs because that's not my goal. Same with like social media. You know, my Instagram page for Balanced Black Girl is really all about content that supplements the podcast. It's not creating a whole bunch of different things or memes or viral reels. It's all content that is supplemental to the podcast. So I think understanding what your goal is and keeping the main thing, the main thing really helps with that burnout because then your other content can be supplemental. You don't have to rack your brain creating something brand new. One podcast episode gives me dozens of pieces of content every week. And when I got to the point where I was able to

Starting point is 00:10:01 implement systems to help make it more efficient, it actually became so much easier than trying to create something new every single day. Yeah, for sure. Well, do you mind actually speaking of that, cluing us into some of the systems or even platforms that you rely on for just creating all of these different types of content pieces? Absolutely. So I would say first and foremost is Notion. I'm a big Notion fangirl. Anybody who follows me knows that I love Notion. It's what I use to run my whole podcast, my business. It's how I communicate with my team. So that is where we put everything from our editorial calendars to writing show notes to the content that we create on social. All of that is drafted in Notion. So it's in one place. So it's really easy for the team

Starting point is 00:10:45 to find. It's also really easy for us to go back, look at our old records. Oh, have we talked about this on the podcast? Yeah, we did an episode on that in January of 2019. So we don't want to talk about it again or whatever. So Notion is really helpful for helping us stay organized and minimizing a bunch of tools. Another tool that I've really loved that I've started using maybe over the past month or so is called Opus AI. So it's what I use to create my podcast clips for social media. I essentially just upload the full video version that's already been edited for YouTube. And that tool uses AI to find the most kind of interesting or juicy parts of the conversation. And it creates those clips for you. So it saved me a lot of time and a lot of money trying to create those short clips for TikTok and for Reels. And it's been

Starting point is 00:11:31 such a game changer. Oh my gosh. Love that. It's so funny. You mentioned Notion, literally the episode that's out today, the day we were recording this, we had like a 10 minute dissertation on how much we all love Notion. So love that. I'm a huge fan there. Well, I want to talk about community too. So I know one of the things with launching a community is how do I increase engagement in there? You know, I'm posting a bunch myself, but how do I get people actually to share and feel comfortable talking about things that they're working on or they're going through in their own lives? Any tips there? Yeah. You know, I recently have had a really kind of big mindset shift around this that has helped me a lot, particularly when it comes to social media is I for so long always thought that the

Starting point is 00:12:15 comments or someone commenting on a piece of my content was about me. And like if they had a question or if I missed something or if I made a mistake and they're pointing it out, or even if they say something snarky, I always thought that it was about me, something that I either did right or did wrong or needed to respond to. And recently I've had this shift where I'm like, actually, the comments are for people to talk to one another. I recently had a podcast clip that I shared, I don't know, maybe Tuesday, like a few days ago before recording this. And this guy left kind of a snarky comment on, I think it was Instagram. And for a second,

Starting point is 00:12:53 I was like, oh, I need to go in there. I need to like defend it and respond. And I was like, actually, I don't need to. He's asking a question. It doesn't mean that I need to answer. Someone else in my community can answer. And someone did did and then they ended up having a conversation and he actually kind of came around and came to a little bit of understanding that gave him more context to the clip and so I think creating content that creates conversation amongst the members of your community instead of feeling like it's only a one way conversation with you is something that one generates great engagement, but that also helps people connect with one another, whether they are conversing over something good or correcting one another. When people are in the comments talking to each other, that's kind of where that goodness

Starting point is 00:13:36 happens. Oh, absolutely. And I am, it's like such a fresh perspective on that because you don't think about it like that. Like you said, it was just a recent mind shift for you. And I think a lot of people are caught up in trying to respond to the quote unquote haters or whatever, or just respond to every question that comes in. And that gets everyone so burnt out. And so what you're saying is just let your community interact with one another in those comments, in those, you know, Facebook groups or wherever you may have a community. It doesn't always have to start and end with you. And I love that.

Starting point is 00:14:13 Okay. We are approaching the end of the interview here, but we love to ask this question on the show. And that is, what do you know now that you wish you knew a little earlier on in your career? Kind of similar to what we were just talking about, that I don't have to know everything, that I don't have to know how to do everything, that it's okay to constantly be learning. And when I really got to the point where I embraced continuously being a student, that is when I felt more confident, more competent.

Starting point is 00:14:42 I learned how to ask better questions and follow curiosity instead of feeling like I needed to be right all the time. That's when a lot of opportunities really opened up for me. So I wish I would have kind of embraced that mindset a lot earlier. Yeah, absolutely. Well, where can everybody find you follow along with what you're up to follow balance black girl and sign up for your newsletter, all that good stuff. Where can they find you online? Yes, definitely. So you can find me at Balance Black Girl on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, wherever you enjoy your podcasts. We have new episodes every Tuesday. My social media, I'm on Instagram and TikTok at Balanced Less, Balanced L-E-S. If you

Starting point is 00:15:23 go to the link in my profile, you will find, you know, links to the podcast, as well as I have like a link to where you can get some of my favorite notion templates. You can be added to my newsletter. So that's where you can find me. Oh, I love that. We're going to check that out ourselves too. And we'll have everything linked in the show notes for people to find and connect with you. But thank you less for joining us. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for having me. We are so excited to share that our first ever free Marketing Happy Hour digital resource is now available. Download the Dream Career Game Plan today at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. That's

Starting point is 00:16:06 marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. This five-step workbook will guide you through defining your goals, building your network, diversifying your skills, influencing where you're at, and investing in your growth. Cassie and I created this resource with marketing careers in mind, but the framework can be applied to any industry. Our hope is that this workbook will help you truly elevate your career, whether you're in the market for a new position or just looking to make your mark in your current organization. No matter where this resource finds you, we are cheering you on every step of the way. So go check it out at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie to download and make your career dreams come true.

Marketing Happy Hour - Nurturing Your Audience with Weekly Content | Les Alfred of Balanced Black Girl

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