The best social sharing snippet from this interview is by far… “People think they have to be in all the platforms all the time. And that’s, that’s part of the fatigue of exhaustion. So maybe you just pick one. And stay on that for doing experiment maybe two to three months and see what you can achieve in that time and just do these short little experiments.”
In this podcast episode, I chat with Nedra Rezinas, a marketing strategist and adjunct faculty member at Portland State University. Nedra shares her focus on helping introverted and empathy-driven service-based business owners create authentic marketing strategies. We talk about alternatives to social media marketing, such as email newsletters and podcasts, and highlight the importance of building genuine relationships and leveraging professional networks like LinkedIn. Nedra also talks about the need for personalized marketing approaches and discusses overcoming marketing fatigue and the shame often associated with self-promotion. The conversation provides valuable insights into creating effective, authentic marketing strategies without relying heavily on social media.
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Hello, and welcome to the small business sweet spot. I’m your host Barb Davids, and this show is dedicated to helping small business owners like you get more organic website traffic and also to help create and distribute content and analyzing the numbers so that we can make better informed marketing decisions. It is action oriented, direct, and conversational. And if you’ve been looking for SEO or content marketing help, please stick around to the very end where I share about the group coaching program, small business sweet spot. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s go.
Hello, and welcome back to this very special episode at the small business sweet spot. I am joined by aligned content, strategist, Nedra Rezinas, friend, and colleague of mine in person. Super fun. It’s just a treat, right? Yeah, we are at Portland state university where she. Teaches some classes.
Part-time. I’ll let you fill in here. I’m an adjunct faculty. So I teach one or two classes, a term. Yep. Around marketing usually. So yeah. And we met I mean, was it during the pandemic? I created a community of other freelancers called the web collaborators. And I think, well, Jen was, I knew Jen and she invited you and there’s a bunch of us. That we talked through challenges, software. Clients struggled, all kinds of topics.
It was really, it was really fun. Yeah. And so we thought we would talk about her. She has a few different topics that she talks about, but I did want to bring to light. Something in particular that I was wondering about, and I know some other people have been talking about. But I want to first read off her bio.
So you know who you’re talking to, and then I’m going to have her talk a little bit about where her sweet spot is and who she serves . I’ll read off your bio and then we can go on to the next thing. Nedra brings over 20 years of collective business experience to the table, including working with hundreds of businesses. On their website and marketing decisions.
She is a marketing strategist and coach who helps service-based businesses create 30 day custom marketing roadmap. In addition, Nedra coaches her clients on how to build confidence consistently market their business and gives them permission to market authentically and connect to their values. Nedra supports clients who identify as introverted, empathy driven and, or highly sensitive HSP want to connect with people by building authentic relationships that can lead into referral partners and want to remove feelings of shame around promoting themselves to others. Nedra teaches at the school of business at Portland state university and at the Oregon small business development center.
So you’re just teaching all the things and I love it. Thanks. How did you get into this particular group that you teach and what you teach? Well it all started when I actually went to classes at the small business development center back in 2007 when I had my web design business.
So a long time ago, it was like the first pilot program. And I learned a lot and that was the only four classes. And then fast forward, about 10 years. My mentor, Jackie was still teaching those SBDC classes and I was actually getting a lot of help and support from her. And she said that there was a opening to teach a web marketing class. At the SBDC and I’m like, what? And she’s like, yeah, you really, you want to teach?
I’m like, yeah, I’ve been interested in it. She’s like, okay, here you go. And it was three hours. You know, in person I’d never taught like that before. So I, I had to kind of prepare and practice a lot, but after I did a few of them, I got a lot easier and I got kind of. Got settled into teaching at least once a quarter.
And then opportunity came up at Portland state because I knew people. The SBDC that so Hey you be, why don’t you do that too? I’m like, oh, I love that. So it’s just kinda, it’s all about who, you know, and your connections, relationships really. That’s very true. The networking thing. I used to think it was pretty icky.
And then I don’t think it’s icky anymore, just because of some of the groups that have come out of it. The past few years, people are very genuinely wanting to talk with other people and see what they’re up to and share their expertise and that kind of thing. So. I don’t I don’t think it’s like the salesy icky conferencey that I used to think it was when I was in my twenties, basically.
So let’s go into, we are going to talk about what did we say? We were going to talk about marketing. The marketing without social media. Without social medium. Because I know that people have asked me about that. I’ve wondered about it because I’m. I’m more on the organic search side. So if somebody were thinking about marketing and they don’t want to get on social media at all later, what did you Instagram or Facebook, what is maybe the first thing that you asked them or that you tell them? Well, I usually talk to them about what their experience has been on social media, because usually they’ve had something and it’s unfortunately been pretty, pretty poor. Very frustrating.
And so we talk through that and, and a lot of times it’s like, I work with lots of sensitive. HSP or introverted folks. And they’re like, they feel like they have to be influencer. They feel like they have to be like on the spot. And that is not who they are. So it makes them very uncomfortable.
And so then we’re like, okay, well what, what are some marketing activities? Or even just, you know, educational pieces that you like to do with your clients or for your community that might fill in the gaps where social media is that, and that kinda leads to other ideas and other conversations like, like you Barb, you’re doing a podcast that’s another, as a really good alternative to social media. And in fact What was it?
I think I was listening to one of your podcasts or somebody was breaking down. I think it was that one gentleman on the one podcast you were talking about, how. The, the influence of podcasts is so it’s so new and exciting that it’s a different kind of audience that’s listening to, or they’ve been watching social media and it can hit people differently and they can listen to in their car.
They do it. Podcasting is is interesting because the people engage in it in different ways. It could be doing dishes, they walking their dog, they could be driving a car. Maybe cleaning, but that you’re getting to them in a, in a very kind of personal way. So that’s one method. I think that can be a nice alternative.
Yeah, that was a Doug Cunnington. I love that. All about podcasting. Yeah. So educational. Yeah. Do you consider Pinterest social media? Platform. Well, yeah, it is. But I think, I think, you know, this is where it gets a little gray area. I think Pinterest and LinkedIn are both social media platforms, but they’re, they’re just very different than what’s out there.
Very different than Facebook or Instagram or even Snapchat or. TikTok. They’re a lot quieter. So, you know, Pinterest. I think if you have a product based business, it can be really great because pins can last. For three months to years. They have a longevity and there’s no friend algorithm when it comes to Pinterest.
So it’s a different kind of model completely. So I think that can be really good. And then LinkedIn is very professional people. Aren’t, you know, there’s a certain threshold of what people put on LinkedIn, but it’s usually pretty, pretty clean and pretty precise and very, very much on par what they do for their business.
So I think I know a lot of people that have switched over to LinkedIn and finding a lot of luck and feeling like that that’s the one social media they can do that doesn’t make them feel icky or. Makes them feel like they can sustain it. That makes sense. The the Pinterest pins amaze me because I had a client who did them and she pushed put up something. And something didn’t take off for like a year. And it’s almost like organic search where you just don’t know when it’s going to take off and the friend algorithm.
That was an interesting point because now lately with Instagram, everything’s going crazy and Tik TOK that might not even stick around. Who knows and all that kind of stuff. Is there any particular. Industries that work well with some non social media marketing versus others? Well, yeah. I’ve worked with people that are very like the financial and health and they’re, they’re so restricted, they’re very heavily regulated. So they can’t, they have to be careful what they say. They can’t. I know at least I worked with financial people. They can’t just share testimonials. They can’t do. There’s a lot of things. It’s like almost like with. Can’t they say. Is more than what the can say. So, you know some some place like LinkedIn could be great.
It’s not about posting is about connecting to people and having conversations in DM sometimes. And so that can be really powerful. And even law firms, I’ve heard lots of law firms and they can really have success on LinkedIn because then they can connect actually. Cause a lot of times. The lawyers I worked with actually got more work with from other lawyers and law firms.
Not necessarily. That was exactly how they, you know, it was like, that was a referral partners. That was very powerful. So to get on LinkedIn and be top of mind with other people and connect like that could be really powerful and impactful for them. Yeah. I was on LinkedIn and I’ve kind of Stepped away from it for a little bit.
I think that the service-based small business owners that I serve, I mean, I’ve gotten a lot of connections in, in the network, in the industry or complimentary industries. But as far as like where the people that I normally work with, they’re not, they don’t tend to be on there as much. There are some but they’re just not there as much.
I feel like it’s still very much B2B there. Is that what you think too? Is it. Oh, yeah, definitely B2B on LinkedIn. That’s absolutely. Yeah. What can somebody ask themselves to say, okay, what do I need to ask to say, where do I go? Or what should I consider first? I think the first easiest step is to, you know, are you doing an email newsletter?
Cause that’s, that’s what I’ve seen. A lot of people do that maybe had even like a Facebook group, they migrated their community onto an email newsletter and have a lot of success. And. And it email newsletters you can have again, it’s almost like it’s all like. Podcasts you have like much deeper relationship, much more intimate. And you know, there’s a frequency with which you can deliver content that people are expecting, and especially with like sub stack and all these other kinds of newsletter platforms coming into play.
It’s, it’s kind of changing the atmosphere a bit in a good way. And so I think what I’m starting to see people that maybe had a Facebook group or now having a Substack group or something. Something along those lines. And I’m having a lot of success because their audience and folks are getting off social media too.
So they want a different way to communicate with them and, and learn about their services and work with them. Yeah. How often do you think someone should do a newsletter? I think I usually have my clients start just once a month. I think that’s, that’s a good place to start. It’s reasonable. And then once you have a good cadence of that, then you can bump it up more frequently. Right now I’m doing a weekly newsletter and starting see some good. Some good traction with that, but it takes a lot of work.
So, you know, and you have to be. Careful. It or just like, understand what, how to plot it out, just like your podcast. And you have to make sure you know where you’re going to talk about and it’s good to plan it out and then batch it. Same thing with the newsletter, if you can And, and you don’t want to overdo it.
You want to be. Considerate of how much people receive it. So I think you can build up to like that once a week. And I think that that’s reasonable. I knew one person who actually did once a day and she warned people and she. I, yeah, she really bashed the heck out of that. And she did it for like two years and I think she, then she burned out.
So I think that’s, that’s pretty extreme. What was that industry? Yeah. It was actually mom owned businesses is a very, very fine niche of yeah. Focused. So. Mom to own businesses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So mom owned business, even then, like, what do you talk about every day?
It seems like so much. She, she definitely had like a formula where she talked about tools and she had little thoughtful sayings. Yeah. She had a very formulaic email, but I read it every day because a lot of times it was really uplifting and. Very positive stuff in it. Yeah. How do you feel about like themes with content?
Cause I can go back and forth with like seasons or themes and I know some people are like doing something one month and then another, or maybe their industry is seasonal even. Yeah, I agree. It depends on the industry and what you’re trying to do, but it can be a lot easier to, to create content around themes or seasons, because then you have, you have these kind of focal points.
And especially if it’s. You know, some, some businesses kind of slowed down the summer. So, you know, maybe it’s better to do these ramp ups in the fall, or like, you know, After after the holidays. Today’s and, and focus on that. And that’s where you put your energy. So I think it just depends, but yeah, th there’s it’s B it’s good to be aware of the cycles of, of your business.
And sometimes it takes a while to figure out if you’ve only been in business a year or two. It’s not until like year three or four, you really start to go, oh, this is, these are the norms, you know? Yeah.
All right. So you talk about removing some of the what was it, the the shame around marketing and you talked about fatigue. Where. Go into that for me. Yeah. A lot of times, you know I have people in my community or potential clients that You know, they think marketing is one thing and it’s, it’s really there’s so much. Cookie cutter, like styles of marketing that are just like, you must follow this, you must do these things and you will find success or you will get these clients.
And so these, you know, I’ve done, I’ve been guilty of this too, but I’ll do whatever they say. And then it doesn’t work. And I’m like, what did I do wrong? Well, yeah, because it’s not, for me. It wasn’t meant it wasn’t custom for me. And so I have this special ability to help my clients see what makes them. Unique because they are their business.
They are who they are. They are you. You know, they’re selling themselves and that’s why people come to them. So I think they lose track of who and why they’re special and what even, maybe why they got into business in the first place. They they’re just kinda like burnt out and stuck. And so I can help them kind of unravel and open up some possibilities and give them permission to do things. And it may be a way in marketing that they think they can do, but they’re too afraid or they’re, there’s. They’re afraid somebody’s going to shut them down or, you know, all kinds of reasons.
We all feel like that sometimes. And, and really empower them to take a path that’s less traveled, but also a lot more opportunity because people aren’t doing it at all. It’s, it’s something a little different. Yeah. And I like that a lot, because I do feel like there’s a lot of where I run across them, actually, just when they, you know, cold email, you and they had this pitch and you can tell already they’re not even, they don’t even just give a crap at all about your business.
And they’re just saying, oh, you need this, but they don’t really, they give you the wrong name. They give you the wrong industry. Or like, in my case, there’ll be like, oh, you’re not ranking for this keyword. Yeah. I don’t want to. Wow. Like, it’s just the zebras. I don’t want to ring for that. So anyways. And then in terms of fatigue, What, what can you talk about there now? I can actually say that just recently.
I’ve been feeling that with Instagram. Trying to keep it like. Okay. Don’t. Don’t worry. It’s just because it’s because I’ve been out there for like a year straight. And I know that it’s been about, like, I can do stuff for the clients, right? Like that’s what I’m here for, for them. But for me, trying to figure stuff out for my business. It’s still a learning process in terms of getting in front of the people, because nobody wants to do digital marketing.
Technically like the SEO is a very dry subject for a lot of people. Right. So trying to find a fun way to put that. It’s not so fun when I’m not necessarily, I’m very. When you call it. This or that kind of, and so I have definitely felt the fatigue of putting stuff out there and not seeing it necessarily do too much.
So let’s say I came to you and I’m like, I’m fatigued. Yeah, I wouldn’t say that, but oh yeah. I know what she mean. And that’s so common. Like a lot of times I have people come to me. They’re like, they’ve been doing everything and trying it all and they’re like, they’re exhausted or. They’re frozen because they have that perfectionist issue where they, I mean, it has to be perfect and it has to, has to be just so, and then they’re not doing anything and then there’s maybe some in between, and it’s all understandable, especially in the world that we live in and the pressure we’re under too, you. Because, I mean, the problem is with social media, you go in there and you compare yourself and then you just feel crushed if in like minutes. It doesn’t take much at all.
I’ve definitely felt that way a lot. So I try to minimize my social media these days. Yeah. But but I think speaking to what you’re talking about, like you know finding maybe, you know, let’s take an example with social media. Sadly. People think they have to be in all the platforms all the time.
And that’s, that’s part of the fatigue of exhaustion. So maybe you just pick one. And stay on that for doing experiment maybe two to three months and see what you can achieve in that time and just do these short little experiments. That’s why I like to do with my clients is help encourage them to do this. And do this and slowly unravel what is possible instead of trying to do it all at once.
And then you’re like burnout and you’re like, I don’t want this ever again. Sadly, a lot of the other marketing programs and really pushing to do that. Yeah. In terms of referrals and referral marking. I know that we’re going to maybe touch on that a little bit better. What is like one of your best pieces of advice to get started with that type of marketing. Yeah.
Actually it was advice I was given to me many years ago in a coworking space. It was one of the owners. It was having a hard time with my web design business and was struggling to find clients. And she’s like, you know, you should reach out to people kind of like They called it like shoulder industry, or, you know, very similar to you.
In that case for web designer, that could be a videographer, it could be SEO specialist. It could be a graphic designer. There’s a number of people and talk, tell them you’re looking for work and you want to collaborate, or you can refer each other. And even, you know, she’s like even reached out to other web designers cause you probably don’t do the same thing.
And I hadn’t really thought about like that. And I was like, wow, that’s really smart. And so I actually started doing that. And within months I, I had these collaboration projects where I was working together with folks like that. And I had work and it was more fun too, because I was working with people.
So I think you start with people. The secret, like she was saying. As to work with other people that understand similar kind of clients as you. So it’s an easy, like The trade-off or it’s, it’s easy kinda to showcase like, oh, you should work with Nedra because I know she does a great web design and this is what she does.
Like, it’s easy for them to say cause they understand it. Like, whereas maybe someone who doesn’t. Overlap with web design very well is just like, like, you know, interior designers. Like, I don’t know what that. But she does. It looks good to me, but I have no idea about the details. Whereas a graphic designer can vouch for you much closer and is. Is investigating your work.
And then if they even worked with you can be like, okay, she’s easy to work with. Yada, yada, that kind of thing. So I think that’s one of the easiest places to start. It takes time, but it can be easy because it’s usually people, you know, or you can start building a slow. Like a small network of people like that.
Yeah. , When we were talking about marketing strategists and that kind of thing, and your role is marketing strategist. How can you, how do you differentiate yourself from other people? Right. So I think the best way to talk about it is the I, I help people incorporate themselves into the marketing.
I’m not going to give you some cookie cutter path that says you got to do these eight steps and it’s going to be perfect. No. It’s I actually when I create my roadmaps for my clients, it’s very custom and very about them. And to, in. Very so detailed. They’re just usually after I show them the roadmap, they’re just like, whoa, you see who I am.
You understand me better than I understand myself. It’s pretty incredible and, and it gives them a chance to reflect and know what’s possible. And so and I really emphasize marketing to be a little bit lighter and not. This heavy thing they have to do and actually give them permission to do less and how to batch and be effective and repurpose and, and just some things that they probably haven’t thought of before that can make their lives so much easier and actually give them permission to ignore a lot of things.
Cause that’s, that’s sadly in our culture where you have to feel like you do all the things all the time, and that’s obviously not working for just about everybody. That’s very true. Very true. And your favorite tool. Calendly Calendly has been a game changer for me. Like I cannot tell you Barb, what it’s like, how easy it is to meet with people to get paid for work, to get in, get like questions answered.
It’s it’s just been. I I’ve even, I’m such a used super user. They’ve actually contacted me multiple times to give them feedback. Like, what can we prove this? That’s. When we do that. So yeah. I’m a huge believer in Calendly and we’ll probably, you know, use them. And so they got a business or something.
I don’t know. Hopefully they don’t. So they’ll, there’ll be around for awhile. Yeah. Very cool. What is your most frequently asked question?. Oh, well this, yes, I do get this a lot. Do I actually implement marketing for my clients? And the answer is no, because I did that for 15 years as a web designer. I, I know that my lane is to help make the decisions and do the strategy before you implement.
So you can do a better job of it and hire the right people. Because a lot of times what I do with my clients is help them hire web designers, help them hire. Virtual assistants. Help them hire SEO people because they don’t know how to hire anyone like that. And they’re usually been burned or something, you know, something’s happened to them where they’re they’re skeptical and of course they should be.
So I can go in and. Actually, you know, bring them really great people. To interview and help them through the whole hiring process. Even it’s pretty powerful. So I may not implement, but I have other ways to help them find the implementers to do the job. I think that is very impactful because it is difficult to find somebody that does all the things.
So you do have to find individual people. And if you already know them and have vetted them and talk to them, then that makes it much easier for the small business owner. Like super hands down. Yeah. All right. If somebody were to walk away from this episode, what do you think the best takeaway would be for them? The idea of marketing, maybe isn’t what you think it is. It’s really good to look outside. The extroverted marketing world and see that there are alternatives that people are really seeking, especially when it comes to alternative social media that you should consider. And be curious about, so don’t, don’t shut yourself off to marketing.
There’s a lot of great things you can be doing. Okay. And if somebody wants to learn more about the marketing that you do in the roadmap that you provide, how can they find you in, what do you, is there any like resource you want to point them to? Yeah. My website, I think is great nedrarezinas.com. And I also offer a really very helpful workshop once a month called marketing focus days.
It’s the first Thursday of the month. And it’s, you’re building, we’re building a community in there. People you get to meet other business owners like yourself. There’s a lot of teaching and there’s also a really awesome time that where you can work on your business. You’re given that to like 20 minutes or so, where I set you off and you go and actually work on your business, you come back and you talk about it.
And there’s accountability. It’s very powerful from a lot of people. And I’ve been doing it for almost a year. Yeah, I love that. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today and sitting down and taking the time and letting me and you use the space. This was great. So thank you. Oh, thanks Barb for inviting me. It’s been a pleasure. Yeah.
And thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode and stay tuned for next episodes to help your business thrive online. See you in the next sweet spot. Cheers.
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