Speaker 1: Welcome to The Socialite Podcast, where we empower you with the marketing know-how you need to create the business of your dreams. I'm your host, Steph Taylor, and I'm a marketing nerd, Shiraz lover, and passport stamp collector. Join me as I dive into all things small business marketing and deliver them to you in bite-sized, fluff-free lessons every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Let's get learning. Hey, welcome to Socialite. This is episode 119. This episode is brought to you by my free three-day Simpler Marketing Challenge. If you're feeling overwhelmed, scattered, and all over the place when it comes to marketing your business, we need to fix that. Over the three days in the challenge, we'll clarify, simplify, and streamline how you market your business so that you're getting the absolute best results possible for your limited time, money, and energy. I'll also share some of my favorite hacks for saving time when it comes to marketing your business so that you don't have to spend hours every day trying to do all of the things. Head to stephtaylor.co forward slash challenge to register for the three-day challenge. Okay, this episode is a little bit different because it's aimed mostly at my listeners who are social media managers, because I know there are quite a few of you out there. But even if you're not a social media manager, you might learn a thing or two from this episode, especially if you run a client-based business of any sort. Today, I'm sharing some of the biggest lessons I've learned from being a social media manager. We're no longer taking social media management clients. These are some of the things that I've picked up in the five-ish years or so that I've been managing social media accounts for clients. First as a freelancer, side hustling alongside my corporate job, and then through Wild Bloom with a team behind me. Before we get stuck in, this podcast is in the running to win an award at the Australian Podcast Awards. All I need is you guys to get behind me and vote for the podcast. It would really mean a huge amount to me if you could just take a couple of minutes to head to stephtaylor.co.au and cast your vote and tell the judges that this podcast is amazing and that it should win. Okay, awesome. Let's get stuck into this episode. Number one, the first thing I've learned, the people who haggle your prices will always have the highest expectations. I'm yet to come across an exception to this one. I think it's because they don't really value what you're offering, so they haggle it down. Because they don't see the value in it, then they will always expect more and more from you. It's so tempting to accept work from these people, especially when you're starting out and when your clients are few and far between. But trust me, these clients are not worth it. There are people out there who will pay what you're worth. You just need to find them. Number two, always have a contract in place. You don't need a contract until one day you do and you wish that you'd had one in place. I've heard some pretty bad stories of people getting ripped off and getting burnt without a contract. So just invest that relatively small amount of money that it costs to get a template contract drawn up and make sure you use it. Number three, always require at least 50% upfront payment, especially if you have a team to pay. Because if your client hasn't paid you, you still have to pay your team for their time on the work. Some people will ask for 50% upfront and the remaining 50% upon delivery of social content. I think that's a pretty good approach as it ensures that the client is as invested in the process as you are. Otherwise, some of them have a bit of a tendency to go AWOL and not reply to emails or answer your calls, and then it's really no fun for anyone. Number four, there is always going to be someone cheaper than you, so don't compete on price. Don't try to be the cheapest, please. Find something else to differentiate you from everyone else out there. Maybe you'll target a certain industry only or your branding will resonate with a really small segment of the market, or there'll be something different about your process compared to how everyone else does it. Don't compete on price. It's a fast race to the bottom and you're never going to be the leader in that. Number five, community over competition. There are a lot of social media managers out there and it can be a very competitive space sometimes. It would be a much nicer market to be in if everyone was just nice to everyone else. There is more than enough work to go around. Seriously, there's enough out there for everyone, so don't freak out and act like everyone is your competitor. Number six, you can't do everything and do it well. When Wildbloom first started out, we kind of did everything because I had experience in everything from AdWords to blog post writing to Instagram management. I assumed that the best way to do it would be to just offer a one-stop shop. The thing is, it's really hard to be a specialist when you offer everything. You're much better off picking a few things that you can do better than anyone else out there and spend your time becoming known as the go-to person for this. Number seven, get your systems right from the start. This is something I wish I'd done before we even took on a single client because it was a real scramble when we found ourselves with a few on the go and with no systems in place to keep track of job status, invoicing, tasks, etc. Especially once I hired my two team members, this was something I wish I'd sorted out sooner. Even things like where you save files are so important, so get it right. That's it for this episode. If you're a social media manager, I'd love to know, what have you learned? What do you wish you'd known when you were just starting out? Hit me up on Instagram. Send me a DM at stephtaylor.co. Also, if you have two seconds, please head to stephtaylor.co forward slash vote to vote for this podcast in the Australian Podcast Awards. It will be very, very exciting to see this little podcast baby winning. Awesome. Thanks so much for listening, guys. Catch you next time.