What the No Pressure Post Party Taught Me

Andréa Jones: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to wrap up my no pressure post-party experiment and talk about what actually happened, what I learned, and what really surprised me about my business. Because yes, this was a content experiment, but it really was all of my thoughts and... Hello, hello, welcome back.

you Hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to talk about my no pressure post party and the experiment, what actually happened, what didn't, what I learned, what surprised me, and what I kind of already knew would happen, did happen. Because yeah, it was a content experiment, but I have a lot of thoughts about my experience, both looking at the data and energetically. And so I'm going to cover that in this little podcast episode right here.

And you'll may notice I'm filming in my office space today. We rent office space for Uncommon Marketing Agency and I'm like reorganizing my home office and it's not done. You'll never have that project where you start it and it just keeps going on forever. That's what it feels like, even though it's only been a couple of days.

Anyways, we're going to get into the podcast in a moment. But first a word from our sponsor. All right, so I wanna talk about what really happened in the No Pressure post party and get really intentional about the results because I noticed myself kind of falling into a little bit of a habit and ⁓ kind of like posting on autopilot. I know some of you listening to this have experienced that where you're just kind of hitting that post button, you're checking the box, you're clicking your ⁓ Asana task or click up or notion or whatever.

You're like, yep, I did it. I posted to social media. And especially as someone who works in social media, I find that that was happening to me a lot. I was checking off the, yes, I posted a social media box and it became so automatic that when I was looking at my results, I was like, man, this isn't like as engaging as I want it to be.

So I went in to the challenge thinking, okay, Andrea, how can you get more engagement on your posts? I was not trying to close. I want to make that clear. I wasn't trying to get more people into the lab.

I wasn't trying to book more one-on-one calls. I wasn't trying to get more clients in Uncommon Marketing Agency, although all of those things did happen this month. ⁓ I was really trying to get engagement, an engagement that really landed in the place of conversational and not just, ⁓ I like this post kind of stuff, right? So today I'm going to break down kind of what happened, what didn't.

and kind of all of everything, but I want to talk about experimentation first because while I'm a huge believer in like having a strategy and having a plan, we don't know what's going to happen with that strategy or that plan until we actually do it. Okay. And so for me, when I create these kind of low pressure moments where I can have ⁓ kind of a sandbox of guidance and a specific outcome I'm working towards, I have those containers really help me bring intentionality to my experimentation and also create ⁓ in a way that's measurable.

Okay, so I gave myself April 1st through April 30th. That's a measurable amount of time so I can see if this experiment worked for me. I also gave myself a goal, increase engagement, and I use tools like Metricool, which is a product I'm affiliated with. to kind of track my metrics in this container.

So I wanna see whatever percentage increase in engagement throughout the month. And the reason that I did that is so that I wouldn't just be throwing spaghetti at the wall and going, well, the option is clearly to post differently. I wanted to kind of experiment and test different styles of posts within that container to see what worked and what didn't. And also, to really check myself on my belief, my very firm belief that you don't have to post every day.

⁓ But I think sometimes posting every day can give you really intense ⁓ focus amount of time so that you can post more over time. ⁓ So that right there is something that really made the difference in the podcast. That right there is something that really made the difference with this challenge is that that small container of time really helped me see what's measurable. The second thing that happened in this experiment is that I posted more frequently, specifically short form video.

so short form video is my preference when it comes to posting. And inside the Marketing Lab, we talk a lot about marketing to your preferences because your preferences matter. If I tell you create short form videos and you go, Andrea, I'm never gonna do that because I don't like video, then it doesn't matter if it could be the highest engaging type of content, If you don't want to create it, you're not going to create it. And this is how I think about dancing videos.

This is how I personally think about day in the light videos. I've tried my damnedest to record these videos and it's not my preference. So I leaned into my preferences while still kind of experimenting with different styles to see what works. So I stopped, for example, one of the things that I did stylistically on the first 11 days is I put day one, day two, day three in the actual videos themselves.

So text on the screen that said day one, day two, day three. Day one video did well and day 11 video did well purely because of the content. But I think having the numbers on the days actually slowed me down because ain't nobody care what I was doing. Day one people did because they wanted to celebrate me.

They were like, good luck. Congratulations, Andrea, for doing this challenge. It was great. But by day 11, people were like, I don't know.

I don't know if this is for me and I don't know why I should care. And especially since I'm doing short form video, a lot of my videos were going out to people who didn't follow me. In fact, I saw in my ⁓ date with Dre a video. can join me live on YouTube every month around the 10th, on or around the 10th of the month.

I do my data dates where I look into my data and I noticed that TikTok specifically, I got a lot more views, but 90 % of those are people who never heard of me before. They don't even follow me, that sort of thing. So, They don't care what day I'm on, right? So the content I was experimenting with was still talking with different formats.

For example, another example, the top two videos, one was me just excited about Canva, like just geeking out about it. But y'all, I was still in like pre-glam mode. I was in the couch in my bonnet, okay? Just happened.

But I saw this thing. I decided to record the video. And y'all love that one. The second one, I was in glam mode, but I was holding a microphone like I am in this podcast episode.

And I was like really close to the camera and really intimate and kind of speaking in like a way that kind of shakes things up. And ⁓ honestly, I like that one too. And so I posted a lot more, yes, but I also took the time to experiment with different kinds of content. and ⁓ challenging myself to try different things that maybe previously I had tried or hadn't really measured the success of that experiment or just kind of stretching my creative muscles a little bit.

So I tried something and dropped it, the numbers, and I tried something and kept it, the microphone. You see what I did there? ⁓ The other thing that I did in this challenge that I can pat myself on the back for is I did lots of cross posting to all of the channels. I didn't really pick a particular one, though the data says most of y'all you're on Instagram and threads.

Some people are on LinkedIn, but I tested short form content on LinkedIn that did not work. And a lot of new people find me on TikTok, but they're not really hanging out with me there. They find me on TikTok and then probably follow me on Instagram is what I'm guessing. I can't track that.

This is just hypothetical. So instead of trying to manufacture content and create content for all these platforms, I took my content, posted it everywhere, and then see what did the best to confirm my own idea that, yes, I need to spend more time on Instagram and threads, and there's a lot of potential on YouTube that I'm missing out on. So ⁓ the comparison in this intense kind of structure allowed me to ⁓ really have a lot of wins. And so that's my third takeaway from this experiment is that there are a lot of natural feeling wins.

And by natural feeling, I mean, the content that performed the best really seemed like it was just me showing up with a thought that I just had like right now. And so that realness, that specificity, the emotion behind it, the simple usefulness of it really helped it feel less like performing and more like sharing. And I think that's something that is where social media is going, especially in the age of AI. We don't want perfection.

We don't want perfectly polished. We don't want it to be performance. We don't want it to feel like some robot somewhere said it. We want it to feel real, right?

Like a real deal humans at it behind the scenes. And so while I have been preaching the gospel of the lo-fi, low tech content creation, the data is showing, at least with my people, that that is absolutely true. So I'm leaning all the way in to videos that feel like me actually talking. and reacting and showing something in the moment without it being like, are a three ways or blah, blah, blah.

That's not really me. And especially even like when you work with me, when you come into my membership, when we're doing like live sessions, I want my social media to be an accurate reflection of that. And as I always say, social media is a mirror. So as much as I can reflect back to you what it's like to work with me, the better.

And that video of me showing off my Canva hack with my bonnet on the couch is proof positive of that. I thought to myself for a moment, I should record this later. Like literally I thought to myself, I'm gonna record this later because my habit in the morning when I'm working from home, which is most of the time, I wake up, I get a cup of coffee, like after I drop my kids for daycare, right? Do all that mess, drop the kids off to daycare, it's chaos, chaos, rush, rush, and then get home.

I breathe, I have a cup of coffee, I sit on the couch, I answer emails, I scroll on social media, I collect the news stories for the day, I prepare for my day, right? I usually don't have my first meeting till nine or 10. So that gives me some time to prepare. And that's when I saw that camera trick, okay?

I was literally just preparing and then recorded that video. And so that's a huge part of, think why this works is because it doesn't feel like something I scripted out, it just feels like I'm sharing it. And... This is all, and this is a huge reason why I love experimenting.

I don't know if I've ever recorded a video of me in my bonnet before. I don't think I have. And so I think that's the power of experimentation. It's not about just throwing spaghetti at the wall forever.

That's exhausting. I'm exhausted after experimenting in April. But, and I think that there is a very specific container and time and place and reason for experimentation. that can really help you identify what works and then you add that into your strategy and then you keep running the strategy, right?

Now, this next takeaway, I already knew, I already knew it, but I needed to see it to prove it, which is posting more didn't magically fix all of my engagement problems, okay? Like the universe didn't tell me, Andrea, you need to post five to seven times a day and suddenly you'll be a winner. Hello, I don't, first of all, have time or energy to do that and second of all, Neither do you. So while I like the experiment of posting every day, it didn't really result in much.

On some platforms, my views went up, but my engagement kind of shifted around. And I felt myself, especially in the second half of the month, starting to feel really drained from creating content all the time, because the magic to me of social media isn't the media part, it's the social part. It's the part where I get to like scroll through social media and like and comment and share and react and... because I was putting so much pressure on myself to post, I didn't actually do that.

And so my engagement just kind of wiggled around a little bit, but there wasn't enough of a spike for me to go, ⁓ this really worked. You know what I mean? So I think this is a really good reminder that posting more isn't really the strategy. ⁓ I have to also say I didn't start this experiment just so could say, ⁓ look, see, posting more doesn't work.

That wasn't really the point of this. It was just an unexpected half the outcome of it. And the data didn't lie. I mean, the more I posted, the more clarity I got on what worked, absolutely.

But I also noticed I don't need to post every day. I just need to be really intentional about the things that I post and making sure that they're not overly strategized or overthought. I have a lot of good intuitions that I need to lean into and lead with that. Now, my last takeaway is that you need to know what you're measuring.

You have to know what you're measuring. ⁓ Your metrics should match the intent of that piece of content. And so a lot of people come to me having a strategy session. did one with someone last week who has a podcast and they were saying their podcast isn't converting.

And I had to tell them the truth, ma'am. Your podcast isn't for conversions. It's for nurturing and relationship building. A lot of you here listening to this podcast have either joined the lab in the past or you're thinking about joining it in the future.

That's it. When you're ready to join, usually it's because I sent you an email to be like, yay, we have a special promotion, come and join us, right? So it's not necessarily that you're going to join the lab from this podcast, specifically. But for me, I want to see how many downloads am I getting?

How long are people listening? ⁓ If I say like, DM me your thoughts, am I getting DMs? I want to have this be a relationship building piece to my marketing ecosystem. When I'm looking at things like engagement on social media, that's what I'm looking for.

I'm not necessarily looking for conversions. I'm looking for did people find me and did they follow me? Did they follow me and then did they engage with me? If they engage with me, did they then take a next step somewhere else?

Usually for me, that's listening to the podcast or signing up for my newsletter. And then from there, I can track other things, right? One piece of content can't do every single job. And I think some of us are trying to have posts that are, you know, that's Instagram real.

You're trying to more people aware of your product, learn about your product, trust you enough to give you an internet stranger money for the product. Right. We went from wanting social media to be, you know, this way of finding new people to wanting social media to be the end-all be-all of our marketing strategies. while that may have worked in some use cases in the past, 99 % sure it doesn't work today.

So this is a really important lesson learned in this, ⁓ in this, ⁓ so this is a really important lesson learned in this. So this is a really important lesson learned in this experiment is that I didn't just go into it going growth for growth sake. It's not generic, right? I specifically wanted engagement and whatever you're going into with the experiment specificity is key so that you can actually see what actually, what actual result you got from it and not just saying something silly like I want to make more money so I'm going to post more on social media.

Sorry if that's something you said, didn't mean to say silly, but you know what I mean, right? Like I think expectations about going viral. and things like that can really, really harm ⁓ strategies like this when really what I wanted to do was to deepen trust and start conversations and all of those things, right? So some content, yes, is designed to get attention.

Some content is designed to get interaction. Some content is designed to build trust, take the next step. But to expect one single post to do all of those things is setting yourself up for disappointment, my friend. So.

Before I let you go, I got to talk about one thing that's important, which is imperfect motion. What are you actually testing? What are you actually measuring? Because a lot of the spiraling starts because we feel like, and those are air quotes for those of you who aren't watching me, we feel like it's not working.

Okay. We feel like it's not working. So I want to talk about this energy exchange because posting on social media, especially as a solo business owner, an entrepreneur, an individual person, is an energetic exchange, okay? Don't want to get too woo-woo and scare you away.

However, when you're putting yourself out there in the world, there's a lot of time and effort that goes into posting. Last week I spoke at H &H Americas in Chicago. Fabulous event, by the way. Wonderful.

But in my session, one person was talking about how they struggle to post, right? And always use Q &As. Y'all know I love a good Q &A session. Razor Ansh is like, I don't know what's stopping me.

I'm like, it's because you're thinking about posting as one thing. You're like, I want to post Instagram one thing. And you think it's one thing, but there's like 12 steps in that posting process, right? It's your overall strategy, the strategy for that specific post, deciding if is it a real, is that a carousel, is it a story?

What are you trying to say? How are you trying to say it? What feeling are you trying to evoke? Then you got to create the thing.

Are you going into Canva? Are you filming it with your phone? Where are you editing it? Are you adding captions?

Are you writing something to go with it? What time are you posting it? What day are you posting it? Is it a now thing?

Is it for later? Like there's so many things that go into just click post, right? And so I feel like the it doesn't feel like it's working question comes down to an energetic exchange. And this just just happens when we go through the cycles of life, right?

There are so many different cycles of life. There are cycles of ⁓ energy. There are cycles of life things, there are cycles of health, sickness, personal capacity. Like for example, I'm coming up to summer times, this is my last summer where my oldest is going to be in daycare.

And then after that, like next summer, 2027, I need a plan for when my kid isn't in daycare. And I've already decided that I'm not going to do daycare over the summer, which I may, I may go back on myself. This is not. written in stone, y'all.

This is my penciled down plan, okay? I want to be able to spend time with my kids in the summer. Depending on how business goes, I'm going to try to plan for that. So a lighter summer, content creation wise, right?

But what I think happens is that we put the plan up on our vision board. We're like, I want to post every day, or I want to post three days a week. And we don't give ourselves what happens when life happens, right? And I think people understand that, at least, you know, the people who I want to work with, they understand that.

They understand that, you know, people get sick. They understand that sometimes you have to go take your mom to the doctor. They understand that, you know, maybe you had an emergency dentist appointment and you had to cancel the call for today. They understand that ⁓ you didn't respond to the message right away because you have your kids on the weekend.

Like they understand that. You know, maybe you had a flare up of your, ⁓ I don't know, IBS. I don't freaking know. Whatever it is, life, right?

Life happens. And that affects how you create content. I know for me right now, I have a four-year-old and two-year-old, and my brain goes almost entirely to planning life stuff. Like, I didn't realize how much brain power goes into three meals a day.

Close. They're growing like weeds. And I know they just keep growing from here. So like now we're transitioning into the summer months, I need summer clothes.

We have activities, ballets ending in two weeks. So like I need another activity for that. Like there's so much that happens, right? And that takes a lot of brain space.

And so for me to be creative, I actually need a creative outlet outside of marketing, which is my writing. Y'all know I like to write smutty romance novels in my free time. That creative outlet allows me to be more creative in my business. If I were just working my business and dealing with my kids, that's where I get burned out.

But what that means is I actually can't create as much content. So instead of doing a burst of content, let's say two months of the year, if they'll really energize, create all that content. And then the rest of the year, there's crickets. I'm not calling you out if this is you.

However, I would rather go 12 months with more ⁓ interspersed content. then post May, June, and then never post the rest of the year, right? So for me, what that looks like usually is about three posts a week, videos, one from this podcast and then two additional like talking head videos. And then I do, I pull from the podcast, little short quips for threats.

That's pretty much it. I am trying to do more long form YouTube videos as well. We'll see how that goes. It's not a primary focus for me.

That's going to be sporadic. ⁓ And I think sometimes it's okay to tell yourself this is the vision but here's back on plan a b and c if that vision doesn't happen so having a system that supports your current capacity is so important and it's Requirement in my opinion so that you don't crush your creativity. Okay, so energy budgeting so energy budgeting is what I call it and I think that This no pressure post party really showed me that posting every day is not for me. It doesn't work for my real life.

And if I do get a burst of energy, like the beginning of the month, I created lots of content. I'm gonna still do that when I have a burst of energy, but then space it out and post it later for those weeks where I just ain't got it. And this week's one of those weeks after traveling last week, speaking to conference, massive conference, by the way, over 5,000 attendees. I am, your girl is introverted and tired.

And so we're doing a little bit low effort when it comes to the content, low effort, but high impact. And honestly, I feel like this is where my experiment stopped just being posting for the sake of posting and started being a lesson on what actually works for me. So here's what surprised me about like overview. I kind of gave some of the lessons that I learned and things like that, but overview.

⁓ One, I don't know why y'all love that sleeping cap and the bonnet thing. I'm gonna do that again, I guess. Whenever I feel inspired, I'm just gonna film it. And if I happen to have a sleeping cap on, great, because usually I wait.

Like I'll write it in my notes app and then try to film it later, but y'all didn't care. ⁓ You love show don't tell videos. I knew that, but I haven't done it in a while. So I need to do that more.

⁓ Some formats, I love B-roll. But they weren't the b-roll content that performed the best was the stuff where I wasn't at home at home and y'all I'd be staying at home. I stay at home so much. So when I was in Chicago I recorded a bunch of b-roll I'm just going to use all summer.

They all love the b-roll. I'm not doing a day in life video anywhere. I can't do it. I get tired like by 10 o'clock.

I'm like I'm I'm filming for what for who? Y'all don't need to know all this information. ⁓ also no one cared what day of the challenge I was on. Like early on I put day one and was like, ⁓ we all like this.

I said day two, day three, day four. I'm like, nobody cares about this. So I'm to stop doing that. but the other thing is people want regular people, I think real life energy, know, showing something that's tangible, ⁓ sketching something out, sharing a wind.

All of those things work really well. And honestly, I like recording those things the best. So instead of just doing like the very vague like me typing videos, I'm going to try to record more B-roll videos, especially of me eating. I don't know why y'all love it when I go to a restaurant and eat.

I'm going to try it. Wait, don't, at my account, if you're listening, don't answer this question, but is that, is that a business expense? Anyway, I also think that sometimes we just got to let stuff go. Sometimes I really try to force things.

There are a couple of videos that will never see the light of day. One of them, I was peeling something. I think it was like a potato. ⁓ it was a sweet potato.

Have y'all ever tried to peel a sweet potato? My God, why are those things so hard? Peeling it and cutting it. That video won't ever see the light of day.

I was so frustrated that even though I was talking about marketing, I looked pissed. anyways, ⁓ listen, the end of the day, this experiment doesn't mean I'm never going to post every day again, but I think that There are some things that I'm going to take away from this going forward, like more talking head videos, more show and tell, more platform native content on places like TikTok and threads. ⁓ No reason to like do all of the editing tricks and forcing content formats that I don't even like doing.

⁓ Actually tweaking the platforms a little bit content wise and not posting everything everywhere. So yeah, that's kind of what I'm tweaking going forward. And I think that will feel really, really good for me. Okay, biggest lesson though is that there's no one way to do this.

You have to figure out the right way for you and what works for your people as well. And this is why this month in the lab, I'm talking about experimentation without spiraling because experiments are supposed to just give you information. That's it. Just give you information.

Sometimes we make it mean a lot like, ⁓ that post didn't work. I'm the worst. Everyone hates me, right? But I still think having mixed results like I did in this experiment can be incredibly useful.

and leading with curiosity can create some amazing things in your business. It doesn't have to be shameful, ⁓ It doesn't have to be shameful. That's what I'm talking about. Good experiments just give you good information.

That's it. So if you want to kind of crack the code on experimentation in a way that is sustainable, come on in and join us inside the lab. It's onlinedra.com slash lab.

And we're going to walk through how to structure your experiment so that You don't have to feel so awkward about it, but you also don't have to feel so overwhelmed by all of the things. Inside the lab, we're very supportive. And of course, you get unlimited strategy support with this and all of the sessions inside of the lab. And when I say unlimited, I do mean unlimited.

Some members are like, am I bothering you? I've been messaging you a lot. I've been posting in the community a lot. I'm like, that's what you pay for, girl.

Keep going. So come on inside of the lab and join us in perfect motion, how to experiment. without spiraling. And that's my recap to the no pressure post party.

hope it gave you some useful, clear data and direction. And as a good reminder that experimentation is all about learning, not perfecting and keeping going. ⁓ I'll leave you with this question. What are you making?

What are you making mean way too much in your marketing right now? Think about it. What are you putting too much value in, in your marketing right now? I would love to know.

In the meantime, I'll be over on Instagram at onlinedrea and threads. And if you love the show, make sure you rate and review us on Apple podcasts and Spotify helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcasts. And that's all because of your support. That's all for today.

Bye for now.