The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

118 ⎸ Mastering SEO with Kristen Corey

• Episode 118

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In this interview episode, I chat with Kristen Corey, a marketing savvy accountant who has a wealth of knowledge in the world of SEO and content creation. So grab a pen and get ready to take some notes!!

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • technical and superficial aspects of SEO, and whether or not you should hire an SEO specialist
  • challenges and misconceptions in using AI for marketing
  • how to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Meet Kristen:

After obtaining her Bachelors and Masters in accounting, Kristen went into public accounting where she became an auditor. It wasn’t until she had the opportunity to move abroad that she began marketing for entrepreneurs.

She quickly gained experience working with industries including tech, fashion, legal, real estate, and even a high-end chocolate brand. Her experience grew from doing PR, graphic design, inbound marketing, social media management, and website development.

Upon returning back from overseas she was hired by an accounting company to work as both an accountant and marketer.

She found combining her two favorite industries wasn’t just possible but needed, Kristen decided to start a creative agency dedicated to helping accounting firms.


Connect with Kristen:


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Welcome back to the ambitious bookkeeper podcast. Today I have a special guest. I always have a special guest if I'm not doing a solo episode, they're all special. But today I have Kristen Corey, the host of the media books podcast and founder CEO, I guess. What is your title over there? Founder, CEO team lead. Yeah. Yeah. At MediaBooks, which is a marketing firm for accounting professionals. So would you like to introduce yourself to the audience? Yeah. Yeah, most definitely. Well, hello, as Serena said, my name is Kristen Corey. And I do own a marketing agency, but our background is a little different. I kind of had that traditional accounting routes. I have my bachelor's and master's in accounting. I did public accounting specifically auditing, and I even took a good stab at the CPA exam. But now I'm not here. And you know, there's no CPA after my name. And. Essentially, I was working in public accounting and I had an opportunity to move abroad to France. And this was 2016. And at the time, remote working wasn't a thing. So I always have to add that disclaimer. And no one really wanted to hire. A remote accountant. so I was looking at other jobs. Online marketing was a very real possibility. I got into it. I got good at it. And then when I moved back to the States, I wanted to go back into accounting, but all the accounting firms I was talking to were basically like, hey, I We'll hire you to do accounting, but can you also do our marketing? And eventually I started working with, a small bookkeeping firm and they actually were like, you need to start your own business because you know, you need to help all accountants, not just us. And yeah, and that's how media books was born. I, I have that accounting background. But yeah, we also help you guys with any sort of creative, not any, most, a lot, a lot of creative needs. Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I talk a lot about the importance of having a niche like as like serving our clients, but I think it's super valuable to be working with other like agencies like marketing and advertising other areas that support your business that also understand the accounting business model and the accounting pain points, obviously, especially if you're talking about marketing. But it's so valuable to have someone that like really understands the lingo and also understands marketing. So yeah, I agree with that firm telling you, you should start your own business. People. So yeah, it was really easy for me to pick my niche. So I, I will say that I did have an easy time there, yeah, absolutely. So, you started when? 2017? So, here's the thing. I left my job to do media books February 28th of 2020. And like two weeks later, everything shut down. I'm just like, this is not good timing. But it actually, I mean, it worked out. I worked out great because everything was slow. I kind of had time to plan and get everything together. And then a lot of other people were kind of shifting their focus at the same time. There were a lot of people starting businesses. And so things kind of just we found the silver linings and they worked out for us. Great. So 2020, so now you're three years in, you started out as a different name. Now you've rebranded And what is your main focus? I'm sure there's been iterations of the type of services you've offered, right? Just like with us in accounting, like when I started out, I was offering tax and like doing AR and payroll and AP and all sorts of stuff that I no longer do. So what was your journey in service offerings? And like, where are you at now with that? Yeah. So if you're kind of new to, I guess, my audience we were originally called pro advisor marketing. And at the time we had a very big focus on social media services, content creation. We also did web web design and branding. We call that like our foundation package. Cause you very much need that before you just start posting on social media. So it was kind of like this, you know, you start, you have your foundation and then we'll help you create your content over time. And It was great. Worked out for a while. However, for a number of reasons, we, we had a rebrand. You know, you can call it SEO. You can say we wanted to kind of shift focus, but we rebranded to media books and really kind of doubling down on serving accountants and bookkeepers and then our services. That's the thing you want to business. You kind of have this big plan. You're like, this is how it's going to go. And in 10 years, I just need to figure out how to scale these services. And what you don't realize is that in 10 years, your services are going to be completely different because is going to step in and say, you know, they make writing easier. And so that's, kind of the interesting thing is that we started off with the social content creation services and AI has slowly been kind of getting more and more powerful. And that's kind of where we are today is that our biggest competitor is AI and kind of this perception that I can just do all my marketing for me and there's a lot of misconceptions and how to use it. There's a lot of like tricks and getting like the best content out of it. And then just from a marketing standpoint, from a creative standpoint, you're gonna run into a lot of issues with it. Not to say that we're against it. I have been saying, I don't want to turn into blockbuster where we just ignore technology. And, you know, we're still kind of trying to do things manually. But yeah, it's, it's kind of this interesting journey, even just over, I mean, three years, isn't that long of a time, especially in a business, but our brand and our services have definitely changed. And, uh, yeah, I think we've been doing a good job trying to keep up with those changes and stay ahead of them. so what are you mainly, if you're not focused on content creation now, what are main services or the bread and butter? Yeah. Yeah. Right now, mainly focusing right now on a web design, there is so much you can do with your website. And a lot of it in the beginning when we were designing websites, we sort of had your normal, like you have your homepage about page services page, and this has how you set it up. However, as we. Really got to know our clients more. And I started realizing like everyone's too busy to be posting new, exciting content every day. We really like this idea of finding marketing strategies that have a long shelf life. For example, a tweet has like what an hour. And if you don't like. Go viral in that hour. It's already dead. Instagram posts, Facebook posts. These are all like LinkedIn. It's all has a really short shelf life compared to what you could do with your website, for example. So creating something like a lead magnet ebook downloadable, it goes by a lot of names, putting that on your website. It's just a great way to kind of get emails coming in, in a passive way. And so we've really been focusing on here's how we can help accountants build. Great websites, and it's so much more than just your home page and services page that you can really use it as a, a more advanced part of your marketing strategy and it doesn't involve a lot of like upkeep necessarily or attention as, as does a lot of social media strategies. that's something that I've been doubling down on to like for my firm side of things, obviously for ambitious bookkeeper, we still crank out daily content on social media, but it's a different business model, right? Like ambitious bookkeeper is. a course mentoring platform. And it's not recurring revenue. So if you're constantly trying to get new customers, you have to continually get in front of new people. So that's a totally different business model, which I think someday I should, I may have actually already done a podcast on this a while back, but it bears repeating, like creating a course is a lot and marketing. A course is a lot more work than a bookkeeping firm because you're constantly having to get new customers in to sustain it. So that business model, it kind of requires the daily social content. Whereas when you have a business model, like an accounting firm, you're actually, your goal should be like building trust and relationships. And yes, that can be done through social media, but. Also, depending on the client that you're trying to attract, like, is that client actually hanging out on social media? Most CEOs aren't, like, most of them are like, screw social media. I don't want to be on there. So you've got to kind of shift things. And so, yeah, that's what I've been focusing on too, is like, I do a monthly blog and I always have like a newsletter that goes out every month, sometimes more depending on what's going on. But. Like I've committed to that and like that's been working and also it's content that I know is like you said going to have a long shelf life in what is on there like I'm not going to have to go back and update it and rewrite it. I might have to make some small tweaks to call to actions, but. Other than like the content, like it's solid stuff that one clients have questions about all the time. So it's a place to direct people to, right. Yeah. Without having to repeat yourself and to like, hopefully it's an SEO play. Yeah. Yeah. Most definitely. I mean, that's the thing is these popular quite like one of the question I get all the time is how do I get clients? And like, you can create a podcast episode on that. And unlike a social media posts where just. Falls down in your feed. That's something you can constantly refer to. You can put it, you know, make a whole page on your website about that. I can, you know, do all this blog posts. And it's the same thing with accounting firms. you know, I, I have one client that I think is actually also a client of yours and she has, I don't know if she wants to be an outer, but she has a fantastic resources page where it's like explaining, this is what a balance sheet is. This is what an income statement is. And then she has a whole bunch of resources and it answers those questions. And that's great content. That she can constantly refer back to. and so I mean, there's tons of ways. and making it part of the onboarding or like new client experience to whatever education you can provide, like that's kind of how I look at it is like, I look at our marketing as like educating clients to make them become a good client before they're a client. yeah, that's no, that's a really good way to put it like, this is our process. These are the things that you should know about. Like that's what she's doing with the reports, right? Like first of all, you're showing your expertise, but most of all, you're just helping and educating people. It's not really like a flex, like you're trying to show off, but it, that's like a by product of it. Right. That's what they call like establishing authority. Yeah, because you have that you have that scope creep of, you know, that was 1 big issue back in my bookkeeping days is I'm paying for bookkeeping services, but I think it's advisory services. And so, like, what sort of communication can I have before we sign that engagement letter? So you're very clear on what is and is not happening in the preceding months. Yeah, absolutely. So in case someone's listening and they're like, you've thrown out some words. I don't really know because I'm, I'm new to this. So like I said, SEO we talked about like blogging, which is and podcasting, which would be considered like long form content. Do you want to dive into kind of what some of those like marketing terms are like SEO, for example? Yeah, yeah, most definitely SEO. So I see when people say, do you implement SEO? It's like, there are a million ways to do it. Essentially, let me back up SEO stands for search engine optimization. And essentially what it is, is how do I show up on Google? How do I rank higher? And Google essentially looks at all these websites and says, okay, what website is going to most likely answer this person's search inquiry. And there's a lot of ways that they do that. You can get into really technical stuff like the code on the backend, or it's going to be more superficial stuff. Like when you're looking at a website, is it just like blocks and blocks and blocks of text? Is it really overwhelming? That's bad SEO. You know, how easy is it for someone to, to read a website. And so essentially SEO is just making it a really. Good experience for people when they visit your website. And, and that's kind of the thing is like, it's important for you as a business owner to understand that it's not necessarily important for you to understand, Hey, you got to change the meta on the image that you posted on the homepage and all the blog posts. And this is why it's important. That's something that. You can have a web designer do that's not necessarily something that you honestly should be spending time on. And so that's really kind of where I think, people need to understand is that if you're a business owner, and you're spending a lot of time learning, like the intricacies of SEO, you may just get a bigger return on your investment by hiring someone that understands SEO. It's kind of like someone, I guess, learning all the different depreciation methods, like does a business owner. Probably not. They could probably hire an accountant, save a lot of time and get it done right the first time. totally, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I've done a little bit of learning on SEO, like back at the beginning of when I started the ambitious bookkeeper because I was trying to like, you know, build an email list and things like that. And so I kind of learned a little bit. I did not know about the, like how easy the website is to read, but it makes sense because you are supposed to use like headers Or headings and whatnot. but when I think of SEO, I think of like keywords. So there's some people that really focus on doing the keyword research and writing the blog or writing the post or whatever to make sure these keywords are in there. But like, for me, it's more about like, okay, what topic do I want to cover? I mean, yes, you should. Know what kind of content people are going to look for. So whether that's doing a keyword research or if it's coming from your own experience of questions that clients are asking you, like you don't have to do the keyword research to come up with topics if you already have a bank of client questions, right? But I don't like make sure all these keywords are in my blog posts. I write it like I want to be able to communicate it because that's the other thing too. Like you can overdo it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is I, when I first got into marketing and I was writing blog content, I would have all these keywords that I'd have to integrate into the blog post. And I'm thinking there is no way to naturally write, you know, accounting firm 20 times in that's not going to happen. and that's the thing is that Google also knows how long people spend on a website page. That's your bounce rate. Do people spend time on your website page? Do they look around? Part of keeping their attention is just writing the good content. So you don't want to just add a bunch of keywords in there. And that's kind of also 1 of the issues that we're seeing with AI is that a lot of people. They'll go to, you know, chat GPT and say, I need a blog post. I need this many keywords in it. And I need these keywords. And essentially what chat GPT does is it just takes a summary of, you know, the first page of Google and it'll integrate, you know, all those keywords. But like, is it actually answering the question? Is it talking to your specific audience? And, and, you know, the marketing firm, we are trying to use it as a tool and figure out how do we write better content with chat GPT, but it's not, or, you know, any AI, AI But it's not necessarily as easy as just writing a prompt and generating content. No, no, I use it to create like basically like almost like an outline or my first pass at a blog. And then I go in and remove a bunch of stuff and also add information because I've noticed that even when I am pretty specific with my prompts, like I need it to cover this, this, this, and this, it does. But it doesn't give examples, which is what's going to actually connect with your audience and show them how it applies to them. even when I've asked it to give examples. It doesn't. It's like very surface. Yeah. that's 1 thing. And then the other thing is like, you definitely don't want to just. Copy and paste what came from AI because they could have, like, it could literally be plagiarizing all the process, especially if you're like, I don't even know, like, really how to format this, like, how to do the. Like if you weren't strong in your English classes with your introductions and your conclusions and things like that, like, yeah, it can, and it's writer's block is a thing too. Like I've sat down and been like, okay, I want to write about S Corps, but now I'm like, where should I start? Right? Right. Yeah. Or like, you know, you have to like remind a client that they have to like pay an invoice. And it's like, how do I say this politely? And you know, it's for those kinds of things. But the thing with marketing is like, A lot of the most successful marketing campaigns have been from people that thought of something entirely new. I mean, it's a creative practice. And so when you consider that these AIs, they're pulling content from content that has already been created. You're not really going to be having a unique voice. And, you know, this is more for marketers to worry about. This isn't necessarily for accountants to worry about, but if you're a business owner making that decision of, are we going to use AI or are we going to use a marketer? You got to think strategy wise, do I want to, you know, be really revolutionary and say something that no one else is saying. If you do, I mean, then yeah, or even just be like, it's the difference between sounding dry and flat, like most accounting content or showing your personality, GPT is not necessarily, I mean, you can prompt it to look at your other stuff and write things in your voice, but it's still kind of lands flat, in my opinion. yeah, yeah, there's, there's, we've, we've, that's the thing is when we're playing around with it and trying to figure out how to use it best we'll say, okay, we want it to be in like a more friendly tone or a more professional tone. And sometimes like the pendulum will swing like way in the opposite direction. I'm like, I don't need that many. Yeah. I'm like, okay, calm down on the emojis, like, and the exclamation points. And then like I say, professional. And it's like. You know, my old professor wrote it and I'm like, okay, like, I need to find that one word and it just, it's quicker sometimes when I just write it myself. And that's the thing on, like I said, you know, I have one client where it's like, she'll use, you know, AI To she'll use AI to like, write some content. And when she talks, like when she just writes herself, it's so good. And I'm like trying to, and I know like, you know, time and all those stuff, but like when she writes it herself, it's fantastic. And so it's, it's just kind of like, I don't know, I want, we need like side by side comparisons. Hard to see when you're in the weeds. that's a really good tip, actually, to be like, okay, I'm going to write this on my own and then I'm going to prompt chat GPT to do it and see, like, And then pay, it's like, what's the difference between these pictures? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That would, that would be really cool for you to do like a do you have a YouTube channel? We are just starting one out. I would be a good YouTube video, like to just kind of like critique, you know, AI versus being written by, you know, a client or a copywriter or whatever, you know. I was going to say, can you hear me typing and like writing like, okay, like chat GPT versus me. Um, yeah, no. Oh yeah. That's coming at you. Um, but yeah, no, that's a fantastic idea. And that's, that's the thing is like, I think sometimes when you're in the weeds, it's so hard to get. Consistent social media content out with that short shelf life. You're like, you know, whatever I can get out today and I can cross today off. And tomorrow will be the day that I write something of value. And then tomorrow passes and you're doing, you know, a quote and it's like, okay, like, you know, it's, it's hard to think that like, what do you think is. More important consistency where you're like, okay, we are consistent, but it's AI generated versus maybe you post once or twice a week, but it's like super authentic and like speak from the heart. And you're really infusing your personality and like drawing people in like, what do you think is better? Yeah. No, no, no, no. No, it's a good question. So that's, that's the interesting thing is like doing a post one to two times a week. Every week is consistent, even though it's not every day, the one to two times a week is going to be definitely better than, you know, the daily stuff. And, and I mean, that's the thing that I think. If you watch kind of how social media has changed, it used to be the thing is you have to post every day. And sometimes if you can post multiple times a day, it'll be even better, but as the market got more saturated and we frankly became more jaded to a lot of these messages, we're, we're tuning it out. And so if you can write something that is more authentic, connects more to your audience, even once one to two times a week, you're more likely to get better engagement. On that post versus something where people are just going to scroll past it. And so you still want to engagement is going to be more important. Connecting with people is going to be more important. And one to two times a week, if that's what you can do consistently, great. If you can only do once a week consistently, it's not fantastic, but you know, give it a try. I would say go for that over low quality content every day. Yeah. And even like. Yeah, because I'm not very consistent on my firm page, like on, on LinkedIn, I'm on there almost every day interacting with people, which I think is because of the way the algorithm works over there, like that's still highly valuable. I don't post consistently over there. Sometimes I, cross post what I'm doing on Instagram onto that page and it does pretty well when I do post it. But but yeah, it's. Maybe one or two times a week and sometimes they're like very off the cuff things like something will happen that day with a client or like, for instance, I haven't done a post on this, but I like when I'm out and about in like town in the world, right? Yeah. I love to observe the way businesses are functioning. And so I have like a note on my phone of like, this is wild. Like these are my observations that I'm going to eventually do like either a post or a blog or both or whatever on because I think it's fascinating. Just to see things happen. And so, like, I just have a bank of ideas like that, that, like, when inspiration hits me, sometimes I'll post it right away if I have the time. Otherwise, I'll put it in a note and be like, okay, when I do have the time and I do have, like, a trending audio, I'm gonna create a reel about this. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, I, I do the same thing and I, I have like a notepad and I'll, it's, it's a storytelling and that's when you can kind of pull the most authentic stories. Cause if you're just sitting at your desk and you're like, what happened to me recently and how can I make it, you know, into an intriguing carousel, it's like you can be grasping at straws. And so, yeah, I mean, that's a fantastic way to just create content is just have a notepad on your phone and pull from that all the time. Absolutely. going back to like websites, you said earlier that it used to be like your about page, your services page and a contact or whatever. I don't know what else you said. There was one other thing I think, what is a good website look like today? And like, what do you think are the important pieces of it? Yeah. If you have a virtual firm, just starting with the basics is make sure people have the chance to get to know you. We'll do audit reviews, website audits from time to time. And there's times where I don't even see photos like of the accountant on their website or who I'll be working with or there was someone that scheduled a consultation with us and I couldn't find their name on their website. And for some reason it wasn't on the invite. I think they put like their business name and I'm like, I have no idea who this person's name is. And so create opportunities for people to get to know you have your photo, have your name on your about page, share a little bit about your background show your personality a little bit. Because you are in that virtual environment, people want to know who they're going to be working with, who's on the other end. You may think, Oh, I've talked about myself a ton on social media, but it may have been like three months ago. No one's seeing those posts and, you know, maybe they don't follow you on social media. So I would say the most important thing when it comes to your website is just making sure. You come through, people can see you, they know who they're working with. And then, you know, we can kind of get more advanced from there. Anticipating what questions people are going to ask. So we talked about that resources page having, you know, quick definitions about. Accounting terms, talking about different sort of apps that you use or apps that you recommend. You know, I, I'm sure you guys get the question. Should I use 0 or QuickBooks or should I be using QuickBooks? Or is it okay to use Excel? You know, have FAQs talk about your processes having some long form content, like a blog posts, YouTube videos, podcast content, something where. Let's say someone comes to your website, they discover you, they think you're great, but now is not the time for whatever reason. They don't have the funds. They're looking for a tax accountant and it's, you know, August create an opportunity for them to continue to follow you like a newsletter, direct them to social media. That's another thing. Sometimes on our website, we forget to talk about the fact that we have social media profiles. People can continue to follow us on you know, We still have to market those and so create opportunities where people can continue to connect with you. And that's definitely something that. I think can can help increase your ROI when it comes to your website. But did that answer your question? Yeah, that's super helpful. I'm like, thinking of ways. I'm like, oh, I need to add some certain things to my website because of that. But yeah, or just make sure it's on there and up to date. Yeah. Yeah. That's the other thing is you assume that it's there. And actually I think it was last year Squarespace did like a big rehaul of their engine and how you, how you edit their website. And like a month later I was on our own website and I was like, where's our social media links? And I realized they disappeared during the whole like rehaul. So even if you think your website is up and great and perfect, it's good to kind of just check in every once in a while, at least once a month. And just be like, do I have everything that I actually want to have on my website? so the other thing that you mentioned is like opting into a newsletter and you kind of briefly touched on it like at the top of the podcast episode where you help people create downloadables or ebook or. Do you have, do you help with that? Did I mishear that? I'm like, I don't know who actually said that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, we definitely help with that. So we have kind of multiple options. I mean, if you're a marketing client with us, we can create those and create really kind of personalized content for your audience. We also have a lead magnets library and essentially what you can do is you can go through the library and it'll be things like, you know, sales tax, one on one accounting terms. You should know you can download these. Their Canva links. So you can download, you can get the Canva link. And then in your Canva account, you can update all the brand colors and the logos to your own brand. Upload it to your website, make it a pop up. You can have it as part of like your welcome packet for your clients. So if you're constantly having to explain accounting terms, or you feel like maybe your clients are too scared to ask you like what FIFO means, you can direct them towards this accounting terms, you know, dictionary. Yeah. and they can go and they can, you know, see it. So there's multiple uses for it, but a lot of people are afraid or they don't want to use pop ups because they don't like pop ups, but it really is one of the greatest ways to grow your email list and have this little exchange of value. You know, you can give me your email and I'll give you this, this kind of valuable thing I put together. Yeah, yeah. And then promoting that too. So like, if you're already on social, like you have to constantly promote those free things that you, that you offer because. Unless someone is just exploring and going to your website, which is not common, honestly, like people need to be told to go there. So like, if you're blogging, you need to promote your blog, go on social media, talk about it, email the list that you happen to have, maybe it's five people, whatever. Tell them I just published a blog. Here it is. Here's the bullet points, click here for more info and things like that. But then promoting, like I have this free guide and linking it in your profile and things like that, because yeah, people are not going to necessarily just explore and opt into everything that you have. You have to like show them. What do you do? Right? No, exactly. And I mean, that's a big part of like developing a marketing strategy is do I just post stuff to social media? Do I just write email campaigns and I have my, you know, stagnant website? No, you want to figure out ways to connect them on social media, direct people to your website where they will hopefully download this lead magnet. And then you can send them the email campaign. And then the email campaign is where you can build relationships and then sell. And so kind of consider the whole journey of. How are people going to travel throughout the Internet learning about my business and, and figuring out a way to connect them all. Because, I mean, here's the thing as business owners, we know everything that we assume we know everything that goes on in our business. You know, we know when we make a mistake on an email campaign, we know when we haven't posted to social media, but your audience. They they're not following. Honestly, they're not following that closely. You know, you know, I'm sure, you know, the last time you posted to Instagram, your audience probably doesn't, they probably think that you're posting as usual or, you know. Yeah, that's the other thing because stuff doesn't get shown to everybody. I don't think it's very common for people to like, click the like, alert me when this person posts like that's fairly rare. Like we all have enough alerts, like that's probably not happening. So unless someone like consistently engaged, at least this is how Instagram works. Unless someone consistently engages with your stories or your content, you're not going to show up on their feed every day, even if you're posting every day. So, you can either get discouraged about that or be like, it's cool. Because I'm not posting every day, but you might think I am. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, yeah, that's the thing is that you have to put the social and social media. That's so lame. I hate that phrase. I shouldn't have said that. Um, but no, that's honest, but you do, you have to be social and social media. It's linked. LinkedIn is very much the same way you'll notice. The people that show up in your feed are either people that you engage with on a regular basis or they're like new accounts that you just followed like yesterday. And so, yeah, I mean, people, people are, yeah, going to follow the content and be engaged with the content that they like. And don't, don't be too hard on yourself if you didn't post like for three days, like it'll be okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. There's, I go through like waves of being really inspired and posting a lot. And then it always happens when I like unplug, I will unplug like completely from everything business, social media, everything. And then when I come back to getting back into the rhythm of work, I'm like, Actually, social media doesn't matter. I'm just going to do these underneath. Yeah, yeah. So then it's like, it takes even longer for me to come back to social media when I've taken like a total unplugged thing this last weekend I did and like, I still have barely been on Instagram or anything. I've only just checked my DMs and like shared a couple posts, like. Right, right. Nothing like normal, but. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm, I'm the same way as like when I'm unplugged, it's usually when I'm doing stuff and I'm, you know, busy or in spending time with my family and like, I don't want there to be the perception that like we've shut down. And so like I go on and I share, you know, a post that I found that I liked and then like, yeah, you forget. And that's, I mean, that's when it can be helpful to, of course, outsource your content and get, bring other people into help because it's when, when it's just on you, like the business owner, That's a big ass to keep doing that every single day. consistently, whether that's, you know, once or twice a week, even And if you don't enjoy it, it's like the same thing that we tell our clients, like outsource your bookkeeping. If it's taking you too long and you don't enjoy it, like there's no reason that you need to be doing it. It's the same with, with marketing. Like if you enjoy it then, and you have the time for it, then great. But don't be afraid to outsource it. And yeah, like, if you have been doing it yourself, that's, I would assume that's even better to be able to hand off, to be able to hand over, like, this is my voice. Yeah. Right. Like, go make it happen. Yeah. Give us something to work with and we can, you know, figure out a way to kind of keep that voice going. But yeah, I mean, and that's the thing is like, even handing it over, you don't have to necessarily hand it all over. I, I have one client who we create her content on a monthly basis, but then she also creates her own additional posts. And so she, you know, gets more content out of it and, you know, she can still be involved, but she doesn't feel this pressure to be involved on like a daily basis or something. So just having a little bit of support can even go a long way. And people are even less likely to notice that you took a break. Thank you. Yeah, I love that idea, actually, which is kind of... I mean, it's kind of how I handle the ambitious bookkeeper. Like right now my internal team like has taken over the content creation process as far as social media. I'm still doing the podcast, but then that gives them the content to post, right? So I do the long form and then they. Repurpose it basically into social media and stuff, but I still will go on and create my own reels, do my own stories engage with people, all the engagement on my accounts, always just me. So anyone listening, like, yes, my team creates the content, but we schedule it out. And then like all the engagement, the stories and all those things, that's always me. So that feels a lot less heavy. And, and for me, I'm actually like, I like that part of. My business, like I liked creating the content and stuff, but it just became too much, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it is a lot. I mean, it's especially like we talked about that short shelf life. I mean, you have moments of inspiration and it is a creative practice at the end of the day. So this expectation that you're always, always going to have that inspiration there is just unrealistic. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, Do you have any parting words for since, Oh, you know, part of my listeners are usually like brand new to starting their business. Some of them are more advanced, but let's do a two parter, like a two part question. What is your like best piece of marketing advice for a brand new business? Yeah. So. Become obsessed with the people that you're serving. You know, I, I probably spend more time listening to accounting podcasts and an accounting Facebook groups. And I do marketing groups and I do the marketing groups. Cause I want to keep up my education, but I want to be very much in the know and understand what's going on with accountants in their world, whoever your ideal client is. And I don't necessarily just mean niche. If you have a niche, fantastic, but really get into the people that you want to work with figuring out. What's going on with them? What are they talking about? Even if it's just headline news, listen to their podcasts and really become obsessed with them on the internet because you're going to find opportunities to sell and you're going to figure out how to be an even better communicator when it comes to, you know, being a guest on a podcast or doing a webinar or creating your own social media content. Yeah. Oh, I love that. So overlooked, especially because like, I feel like a lot of brand new bookkeepers or people who are just launching their bookkeeping or accounting business. We spend a lot of time in the groups and the spaces with other accountants trying to figure out like, how are we going to do this thing? But your piece of advice of just getting like obsessed with the customer is so crucial. Like, yeah. Wow, that was great. Okay. So then part two for someone who is more advanced and they have that kind of dialed in. What is. If they wanna take their marketing to the next level, Where would you have them start? Yeah, so I actually thought of this when we were talking earlier about, you know, outsourcing stuff you don't like. Have you ever looked at, I wish I remember what this box is called, but you essentially create a graph and you have four different sections, things you like to do and you're good at, things you don't like to do and you're good at things you. Don't like to do and you're bad at, you know, and then things you're bad at and you don't like to do. You have those four lists start with the things that you're bad at and you don't like to do and then kind of move your way and start to kind of cross those things off your list and cross reference those with. The things that are really taking the most time for you. So, for example, if you're bad at social media, but you like it and you notice it's taking 4 hours a day every day, that may be 1 thing to cross off your list and outsource once you have those things on paper, it's going to be very obvious what you should be outsourcing and kind of, you know, you know, what's going on with your business. You should, you should have an idea of. What leads you're getting through social media? What leads you're getting to your website? What's pulling in a good ROI start writing down, start putting actually on paper, how you're spending your time specifically on those marketing tasks. And then also what you enjoy doing what you like doing and having an honest conversation with what you're good at. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Quadrants. That's what it's called. Yeah. Quadrants. I was going to say, I was like, it's not a SWOT analysis, but it's like, I mean, it's the same theory. Like the SWOT analysis is always also in the four quadrants, but you can use the four quadrants for like lots of things. But I think that one specifically was from is that a Stephen Covey thing? It might be, or it might also, like, there's other versions of it where it's like genius. I'd have to like, I'm on the spot, I swear. I always have all notes. Cause I know I'm like, it's probably been talked about by multiple people and authors and things, but anyway, I'm sure our listeners know someone will write in. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. We'll let you know in the comments. it's a great chart. It's a really awesome way to kind of get clarity on what direction. Cause I think it's like when you're the business owner, you kind of feel like, Oh, I can just do what I want. And it's like, Yes. But also what should you be doing, you know, if you're the business owner and you're trying to grow. So. Great. Awesome. Okay. So if someone wants to connect with you, where's the best place to connect? Yeah, most definitely. So you can find all of us, everything that we do on our website, media books, agency. com. That's M E D I A B O O K S agency. com. Awesome. And and you are. Obviously servicing the accounting community. So if any of you listening need support in your marketing, please reach out to Kristen and get support. And is there anything else that you have special going on in your world? Like over the, you know, over the fall period goes live, sort of figure that out. No, no, you're good. No, you're good. Yeah, no. You know, right now, I mean, the fall is kind of our big time to start. Pushing accountants to actually start focusing on tax season. I know it seems early, but you want that sort of runway to build relationships with your clients. And so we don't have anything that we've announced just yet, but you can go ahead and check out our website and you can find a, find our podcast and our social media accounts. And we'll definitely, uh, update you with some fun resources. Awesome. And subscribe to her newsletter. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Most definitely. It's a fun newsletter. I tell stories. I don't think we met. I'm, I currently live in Japan. My husband's in the military. And so I share stories of eating ramen and weird fish and all that good stuff. So awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing today. I appreciate it so much. And we'll talk to you soon. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Serena.

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