Do you feel social media dominates your life (and marketing)? And rather than doing the things you need to do to grow your business, you wait for social media to “change it all”... 

Let’s chat about it. I am going to use my experience of being home for 7 months (and not travelling) as an example for you to connect with. 

Welcome aboard flight CQM222, I am your pilot, Mariah - you have your ticket to good content marketing in hand. While on this flight the flight attendants will be here to assist you to get off the content creation hamster wheel and onto a new way of marketing to help you live a more freedom-based lifestyle.

Each week you will be given a new stamp in your passport and by the end of the 90 days you will be on your way to explore the world of Content Marketing as a solo traveller.

This is week three - get ready, it is going to be a wild ride!

If you LOVED this part of your trip (the episode), make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah.

⁠⁠GET YOUR TICKET TO GOOD CONTENT MARKETING⁠⁠⁠

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

✨The 3 things you can do to be more free from social media 

✨Why social media is so dominating 

✨What you can do to create a holistic marketing plan 

SHOW RESOURCES 👇

• JOIN the campaign and get your passport - ⁠⁠⁠https://sales.contentqueenmariah.com/90days⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Find out more about how to WORK WITH US -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ www.contentqueenmariah.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Connect with us on INSTAGRAM -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Pilot Speaking. My name is Mariah and welcome to this special series of the Content Queen podcast. You have boarded flight CQM 222 and you have in your hand your ticket to good content marketing. We hope you have a safe journey on this nice day trip. Strap in and get ready to experience all the strategy and learnings you need to enter 2025  with a direction on how to create content that is unique to you and your business that you actually enjoy.

While on board you'll have complimentary access to all the learnings that will help you attract your new passengers to grow and expand your trip. While on this flight the flight attendants will be here to assist you get off the content hamster wheel and onto a new way of marketing to help you live a more freedom based lifestyle.

Each week you'll be given a new stamp on your passport and by the end of the 90 days you'll be on your way to explore the world of content marketing as a solo traveler. Seatbelts on, you're ready to take off. Hello gang. I forgot to actually address this in the last episode, but I am actually recording this from a tent.

If you've been following this journey for quite some time, this is not my first rodeo and I have recorded podcasts from many places before, including a tent. I've done interviews from tents where I have gotten out of the tent drooping in sweat, but we are recording in the evening. It is a bit chilly in Tasmania, so no sweaty gal here.

But yes, if you're watching the videos, um,  on Instagram, little snippets, you will see I'm in a tent, but we've made a good setup. Shout out to Mitch. He's done a really good job.  Speaking of this, speaking of travel, I want to share something with you all that I haven't, I've spoken about a little bit, but not a lot.

So  basically Mitch and I, our goal is to travel full time for the next four years. And of course, within that comes little breaks in travel. Every six months we aim to come home because  Um, I have to see my doctor, I have to see my oncologist, I have to do all kinds of tests to continue living this remission life since my kind of health journey kicked off in 2021.

And it's just easier to come home and do that.  And so  we decided that, yeah, we would spend extra money and come home. We wouldn't be always on the road, but then when we're back home, it kind of feels like we're still traveling anyway, because we've done house sitting and all the things.  Last year. We were in Europe and we, I remember FaceTiming my parents and it must've been in the evening for them on a weekend.

They were pretty drunk and we got talking about when we'd be home and our next plans and mum said,  why don't you just stay home for a little while and, and Mitch can play soccer for the local club because he'd trained just before we went to Europe and a lot of the people there were talking about him and wanted him to play, but obviously we went to Europe.

So we thought, Oh, maybe, maybe we'll do that after South America.  So we did. We stayed at home and have been home until recently for the last six months. We'll be seven by the time we leave again. And now we're traveling. I feel so different. When I was home, obviously I loved it. I loved being able to see friends and family whenever and all that, but there was this feeling of being stuck and waiting for the next thing.

And in that moment, my health did take a turn. I had some thyroid issues and I just, I felt like I was in a little bit of a rut, which has happened many a time since. Um, since starting my business and finding myself back at my parents house or back in my hometown.  And in that I felt like my content took a little bit of a turn.

I felt like I wasn't inspired. It wasn't as engaging. I wasn't getting the engagement and I just, yeah, I felt like I didn't really enjoy it as much. I didn't enjoy a lot of things in those times during that journey. Just because. It was winter for one. But yeah, I just, I felt a little lost. I have since come to realize what all that was about and it was about reconnecting with my vision and an end of one vision to start another and it's all worked out fine.

If we connect back to platforms like social media, sometimes we can feel chained to these. Sometimes we can feel like we're just waiting for the algorithm to save us or for something to happen and next minute we go viral. and everything's fine and our business is fine and we rely a lot on platforms like social media to save our business, save, um,  yeah, the income that comes in and all these things.

We're just really reliant. And I think that's sort of how I felt when I was home, just feeling like waiting for the next thing, waiting for something else to happen.  and make me feel better. But what it was, was me, I had to do that. And I actually went on a bit of a journey to,  Oh, there is a plane going over.

We're very close to the airport, like extremely close to the airport. Like I'm surprised the tent's not shaking.  Yeah. What I felt like is I was, I was waiting for someone else to come and help me through this. And that's what happens a lot in business. We're just waiting for someone else to come and save us.

And when we realized that a social media 24 seven platform is a 24 seven platform and that no matter what, we will never be able to one catch up  to, it's not going to save us. And three, we don't need to give in to something.  that is  not  our business model. It is someone else's business model. Then we can accept and use it as a platform that will work for us rather than be a prisoner of it.

And I want to talk about it.  So the first thing with this is goals. And I did a video on  this on social media a couple of weeks ago, really referring to our  social media goals and how I feel like we're so  stuck and lost and the expectation of social media has really taken over and  really connecting back to my journey of being at home for the last seven months is when I felt in this rut, I had to connect back to the goal of why I decided to be at home for so long and focusing on that.

On that time and having conversations with Mitch, you know, with people around me and remembering that our goal was, you know, to stay home in that period of time. And actually more than just Mitch playing soccer, like we wanted to save money. We wanted to set ourselves up financially so that when we traveled again, because when we were in Europe, there were some times where I had a client that didn't pay us for three months.

And that was really stressful. And that's probably another podcast episode. But there were moments where, we were quite financially stressed because, you know, you'd lose a client or things would happen. So we really wanted to set that foundation.  And that's the same with something like social media. If you have a goal on how to, you want to use social media, then you can remind yourself when you get stuck in this vortex.

And, you know, there can be examples like, uh, we, we have a client that we just started working with, you know, three, four months ago,  thriving business, 20 years in business. They're a, um,  fish and chip shop, but not really a fish and chip shop. They're a seafood experience. And I've talked about, I've been talking about this client quite a bit cause it's a really great case study actually.

But we, they, you know, just wanted to ramp up their social media and have a bit more presence and they hadn't really been doing much with their socials and they had consistent, you know, clients and things coming in, but they kind of wanted just to expand to a new market. So our goal was to try and reach a different market and There is another plane going over.

Um, Or is it a truck? Who knows?  But we wanted to reach a different market, a new market. So that was kind of the goal of our social media. So whenever we would create things, whenever we do things like, okay, it's to reach this audience, we've already got a consistent audience coming in, but we want to reach a new type audience.

And, um, so when we knew that was our focus  and you know, if, numbers below or something, we go, okay, we just need to connect back to that person who is that person and we can move forward. And there wasn't like this whole hung up. Oh my God. The whole business is reliant on this social media being successful.

Then there's no pressure. You enjoy the process. We went out, we filmed content and literally just last night we've had a video go mega viral and we've had, you know, followers coming in consistently ridiculously quickly. And  that is what it's about, right? When you lose that sort of expectation because you've got that main goal and you don't expect more than that, you know, what you want to achieve,  then you can start enjoying that process a little bit more and the content will resonate with the right people because you're connecting back to that goal all the time.

So that's the first one. The second one is prioritizing time.  So  this  helped me,  understand what I could do with my time when I was back home. So this meant taking on extra projects. Sundays were for soccer with Mitch if, well, he got injured quite a few times. So, but that was, you know, time with family.

That was the priority of being home. So that when I needed to make a decision, I could go, okay, well, that's the priority.  If I take on extra work now and I'm working a little bit more, it's because the priority was to save money. That was, you know, connecting back to the goal. One of our goals was to what, for Mitch to play soccer.

So we would prioritize our time to that and then time with family. So if there was an opportunity to spend time with family, we would take that. This helps us  for when we are spending time on certain platforms.  and when and where, how, what, why, all of that. If one, we understand the goal, we can then prioritize our time and where we focus our time in that moment.

So for example, if social media was just for, uh, nurturing your current audience that you've already got, you've got a good client base, you spend time  just doing that. And then where does your other time go to? So I had a call with a client, um, well, Just the other day, and she was saying like, Oh, I get so hung up on where I should be, what I should be doing this, that, and the other.

And I said, look, to be honest, social media for you is going to be about audience growth, but you need to fill that funnel up. There's a really good opportunity for you to build your network across different Social groups, Facebook groups, things like that. And then at least if you've got consistent content up there, they go and see your content, they follow you, and then you nurture them that way.

But I don't think you need to have this massive expectation that you're going to get all of your audience just from posting content. You need to find them in other places. So if you understand the goal of the platform, then you can prioritize your time and you understand Where all your time needs to go and how you divide it up.

Then, you can actually spend less time on social media because you know it's just for that specific goal. And then the first, third one is just sitting with the discomfort and the reshift. So when I got sick and had this thyroid issue, the symptoms were like severe anxiety. I was very anxious. Um, all these other things, we don't have to go into details, but  it was a chance for me to refocus and prioritize myself more.

And it also meant that I needed to make edits in my business, how I was showing up and those changes meant I was able to show up. With more impact and spend less time, I decided to cut back from posting daily to every second day and it just gave me a chance to shift. But if I hadn't had that discomfort, I wouldn't have made those changes.

So feeling shit about social media or shit about your content  is actually that motivation to push and make change. Whenever there's discomfort, it means that there's change to be made, but you have to sit with it first.  So if you are feeling like your marketing is a bit bleh, you're really dominated by these social channels, you feel really unenergized, especially as we come to the end of the year.

I find that happens a lot because we're always like, Oh, just get to the end of the year and next year I'll make a new plan. That's when we probably feel the most uncomfortable and yuck about what we're marketing, what we're doing. That's when it's the time to sit with the discomfort and then make change.

And I felt like when I was back home,  sitting with that discomfort was. the best thing that I could do, even though it made me feel the worst.  So  it all kind of connects, right? If you have your goals and you understand what you want to achieve from platforms like social media, all of your marketing platforms, you prioritize your time.

And then when things don't feel great, you sit with that discomfort and you look at shifts you need to make. Even if your goal doesn't change, the way you reach your goal may. And you know the saying, it's not the goal, it's the person that you become to achieve that goal, which we talked about last week with the episode.

But,  it just happens when we feel that discomfort,  when we feel like, I don't really know what I'm doing on here. Sometimes you just gotta sit with it.  And know that you'll always learn and grow from that. And I read a book, A Path With Heart, by Jack Kornfield. And he talks about challenge, and I spoke about this in a post, but challenge not being good or bad, it's just a challenge.

And when you accept that you know you can never really go wrong, you'll always just be redirected. And it sounds deep, but it is. And this, this, uh, series of Around the World in 90 Days is going a little deep. We're doing it. Because I think they're the shifts we need to make to have impact through our content, which is a chance to have impact to our audience.

So, cycles, it's all really about cycles and seasons. It doesn't mean that you will never feel discomfort.  Time off platforms, re editing strategies.  If you don't have one, you should. So you, when you don't feel great, you know where to start. You're not going, Oh, just throw everything in the bin. You're iterating from that strategy.

And also the mindset stuff works. So in the end, uh, I look back at that time being home and we've still got, once we get back from this Tassie trip, we'll have a couple of weeks, we'll be Christmas, it'll be fun. And the weather will be nice. Everyone will be happy.  I look back  as that time of being home.

massive growth personally and professionally. So  my business did have a growth period while I was home. I did have a drop, but then, you know, pick back up again, but business growth that I haven't seen in a very long time. And now I look back on that time with fondness, even though I'm relaying the discomfort that I went through, just feeling stuck and lost and, you know, not really sure where I was going.

Like I was, I was, crying for no reason. I felt really awful in that time and I don't think the weather helped me at all.  And having a, um, uh, hyperactive thyroid also doesn't. And I see everything I achieved in that time as just so pivotal to the next evolution of me as a traveler, as a nomad, as a person, as a partner, as a business owner.

And I was almost able to free myself from this unnecessary pressure that was  happening in my life through business and I actually have felt more free in that time. Like obviously I have my moments, but I feel I'm becoming less stressed, less anxious and really backing and trusting myself and my judgments in my business.

And that then  the byproduct of that is the content that I'm putting out there that the confidence in my message gets stronger and stronger. And it's just a ripple effect because then people see that they go, Oh my God, who is this person? I want them in my space or whatever. And then you continue to grow your business.

So until you, Take the time to, you know,  have those uncomfortable moments. You can't get to that next level. And that happens in anything, but in marketing as well, even not just in our mindset. So  that's what happened feeling really uncomfortable.  in the last seven months, but had massive growth and  really being able to free myself from myself.

But this is, we can look at this when we're, you know, we're on platforms like a 24 seven news cycle, that is social media and how we can use it to really, you know,  Elevate what we do in our business. And that's where you can really, you know, stay in your lane, so to speak, and focus on what you need to do.

'cause you know your goals, you can prioritize your time from there. And when things feel uncomfortable, you can sit with it and then you can shift. And it's powerful right when we can learn to do these things. But it takes time. So be a content queen or king, and remember that developing your strategy and story and mindset as well develops your business.

Thank you so much for joining me. Today on this flight, stamp your passport, and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends. You can do this by adding it to Instagram stories, tag us at content queen Mariah, or just, you know, hit the share button, send it over.  If you write and review, it does allow me to get more amazing experts on this show.

Like Alex had last week, and we've got some great experts coming up. I'm continually getting pitched because I have ratings and reviews. And the more I get, the more I get pitched, the more guests I get, and more value. So follow me on Instagram or TikTok and let me know if there's any topics in the future you would like me to cover.

Do you like this style of content? I'm very curious. If you're on Spotify, I will have a poll asking if you like this style of stuff and going into the mindset work. And, uh, yeah, I will talk to you very soon. Bye.