Who doesn’t love a quiz? But how do you use quizzes in your business strategically and not in a way that dilutes or damages your brand, or attracts totally wrong for you people to your door?  Guest Ellen Ercolini joins us today to share what’s working now with her quiz. Show notes with key points, takeaways, and links for this episode available at www.maggiepatterson.com/episode120.

Items Discussed in this Episode:

• Ellen tells us a little about her online quiz, what it’s about, and what you’ll find out from taking it
• Ellen shares what you get along with the results of your quiz, the results aren’t the only thing that matters, people want to know what to do with the results
• We learn why Ellen’s process of creating her quiz took 6 months and how she tested it out and made changes to make her quiz hugely useful
• You don’t want a ‘cosmo quiz’ or ‘buzzfeed quiz’, you want it to be unique and give the readers something they don’t know about themselves so it feels personal
• The quiz is an opt in, remember the same rules apply: it needs to be a value add to draw them in
• Having a quiz is becoming the new thing for opt ins, so you have to make sure you stand out and actually convert the quiz takers to customers
• Ellen now uses her quiz as a starting point for each of her clients to prepare them to work with her deeper
• Ellen shares how this quiz has helped her business and helped her really zone in on the people she wants to work with
• Ellen shares results from her quiz and how it has been huge in her business and prompted her to develop even more offerings based on the results of her frequency quiz
• Ellen gives advice on the reasons to have a quiz and what to actually use it for

Top 3 Takeaways from this Episode:

1. It takes time and energy to create a quiz. You need to test and refine it to make sure you really deliver the results you want.
2. Creating a quiz is not just about creating an opt in, it’s about taking a stand. Your business needs to really speak to your body of work, your approach, and you distinct way of doing things.
3. Remember that you will build your list with a quiz, but you want to be sure you’re leading people to a clear outcome and a next step. It’s not just about adding people to your list.

Links for this Episode:

Ellen’s site

Ellen’s guide to making money from your online quiz

Ellen’s 5 steps to launching an online quiz

Take Ellen’s Frequency Analysis quiz

Link to Free Marketing Moxie Facebook Group

When you’re on the content creation hamster wheel, it’s easy to forget about all that content you produce, or worse yet, you spend so much time on social with little to show for it. We’ve got EDGAR Founder Laura Roeder sharing her best tips on scheduling, real-time social engagement and more. Show notes with key points, takeaways, and links for this episode available at www.maggiepatterson.com/episdoe119.

Items Discussed in this Episode:

• I’m sure we all have great ideas over what to do with social media for the new year, but Laura is sharing what overall is working really well with social media
• Laura shares her favorite way to inject personality into social media
• How do we find the balance between using a scheduling tool and responding in real time as a business? Laura gives us her advice
• Batch your social media ahead of time but use your daily time to briefly interact with people in your audience and circle
• If you leave a trail behind, you can know you’ve been productive on social media. Laura explains how to do this
• Laura shares some best practices for recycling previous content including recycling your social media
• The whole idea of social media is that you’re bringing in new people every day, so repurposing older content is ‘new’ to them
• The easiest way to get more traffic from social media is to share more links
• Laura shares one of the big power tips she thinks people are overlooking in EDGAR that could help boost their social media
• What’s next for EDGAR in 2016? Laura shares what’s up and coming!

Top 3 Takeaways from this Episode:

1. Your social activities should leave a trail. You shouldn’t just be pointlessly scrolling. Keep your time in check and think about how you can be most productive.
2. Do you publish once and then let that piece of content languish? Breath new life into old content by re-sharing it!
3. Check out EDGAR to help you manage your social, seriously. It’s our fave tool around here!

Links for this Episode:

EDGAR - Social Media Scheduling Tool

Laura on Twitter

Link to Free Marketing Moxie Facebook Group

We’re Kicking off season 3 today - and we’ve got lots to talk about to get ready for a brand new year. I always look so forward to the New Year, and then a few days in, it seems anti-climatic. I mean, things are still pretty much the same. It’s sort of how I felt after getting married when we’d been living together for more than a year, sure the paper made it legal and we had a great party, but the day-to-day didn’t really change.

In last week’s episode, episode 117, I talked about getting reset for the New Year and specifics on how to build a workable plan. But this week we’re going to dive into how to not succumb to that feeling that this year is just a continuation of the last one. Show notes with key points, takeaways, and links for this episode available at www.maggiepatterson.com/episode118.

Items Discussed in this Episode:

• Sometimes we get so excited about all the new things that will come with the new year, that we experience let down when things seem to stay the same. I share how to overcome that ‘meh’ feeling
• Being honest with yourself is hard, but necessary when looking at what’s not working in your business
• I share my night owl tendencies, and how I have to watch myself but also make room for this in my biz
• I explain what a digital detox is and why you should schedule it right now for sometime this year
• I share my own digital detox success stories
• Space is always a good thing, don’t try to ‘do it all’ right now, you have the whole year!

What’s Working for Me to Start the New Year Strong:

1. Be honest about what really isn’t working. This is harder than it seems, and is not meant to be negative. To be clear, you need to be truthful with yourself.
2. Schedule your downtime and make room for a digital detox. This is probably one of the hardest things to do but it’s so important for your creative time. The only way this works is to put it on the calendar right now.
3. Remember, you have a FULL year - 365 days! It’s so easy to think it has to all get done now, but a year is a long time. Give yourself some breathing room!

Links for this Episode:

Episode 117

Link to Free Marketing Moxie Facebook Group