0:00:00 - Michelle Pualani
Decluttering, so getting rid of all of that clutter. In this episode, we're going to cover digital decluttering. So I'm sure you've heard of decluttering in your space maybe, marie Kondoing your closet, your bookcases, your desk space all super important in terms of your environment. But when was the last time you thought about your digital environment? When was the last time you really considered your online cloud storage, your phone, all of the apps, everything that's in your online presence when it comes to social media, to landing pages, to offers? When did you go through all that? When did you declutter? When did you simplify and make everything super clear, not just for you, but also for your audience, for your customers, for those that you're working with? So, as we wrap up the last year and I know that some of us are still working on that process we have an amazing episode it has nearly 2000 downloads at the time of this recording on Reflecting 2023.
Looking over what happened, ways to celebrate, ways to learn and ways to take what you've gotten from this past year and move it into the new year with intention. So go back. If you haven't yet, listen to that episode. It's a real good one. And then today we're going to talk specifically about decluttering our online space. What does that look like? Why is it important, what should you do about it, and some of the things that you can start to think about in order to actually take those tangible steps and declutter your space so that you're more organized, you're more thoughtful, you're more intentional and you can actually take action without getting distracted, without procrastinating or without feeling like there's a lot of things getting in your way.
0:01:41 - Joanna Newton
So I'm a person with so much digital clutter and I think this comes from the kind of work I do currently. You know, at Millennial Marketer, I think we have something like 25 active clients who are sending emails dealing with digital files, dealing with some of them. We work with social posts, sometimes, course videos, sometimes email content files, like I feel like all I do all day is manage files, and before Millennial Marketer I was working full time and was a freelance social media manager. So if you're a freelance social media manager, you have a lot of digital declutter because you, on your phone, not only do you have your own content, your own videos, maybe even your personal videos, you also are going to have all of your clients videos, and I've experienced constantly running out of storage because of the amount of people's videos that live on my phone, on my personal devices, and it can be really, really overwhelming. And something you might not even realize is that that amount of digital clutter that's in your life, even if you can't see it at all times, it can have an effect on your productivity, your mood, all kinds of things.
I know for me. I have this thing about notifications. I can't stand when I have notifications and then some days it feels like all I'm doing is clearing notifications. I go from one thing clear those notifications, clear other notifications and that can just be a lot and be super overwhelming. When you think about digital decluttering, you have to think about all of the things in your life that are distracting you, because when digital world is cluttered, it can distract you from what's most important, like what the most important thing is you want to get done in a day If you get on your phone to post a social media post and then you have to clear 20 notifications from apps you don't even use, that's a couple minutes of time that are wasted, that don't give you what you need. So all of this declutter does things like make it hard for us to focus. I forgot to turn on my do not disturb over recording and I just got an email notification. So I looked up to the side, saw who it was from, thought for that second oh, I need to send that person an email instead of focused on what I'm doing right now, which is recording a podcast.
You know, in all of those things those distractions, they reduce your productivity, they can make you overwhelmed, stressed, inefficient.
You can even miss opportunities, right, if you have all of these things in your way, all of these notifications, all of these files distracting you. Maybe you don't get that proposal out on time, maybe you forget to reply to that really important contact and you're not putting those top things first. There are also real things like security risks that can happen when you don't know where your files are, when they're in unsafe places, you know those are things that that information can get you know hacked or taken from you, and I think the bottom line is that digital declutter can have an overall negative impact on your wellbeing and your overall mental health. When all of this stuff is all over the place, you can just get the sensitive overwhelm that's unnecessary, you know. One really tangible example of this is if you're sending an email and you need to attach something. If it's difficult to find that file that you're looking to attach, that can cause just a little bit of stress in that moment that you know might be unnecessary if you were to have a cleaner digital space.
0:05:18 - Michelle Pualani
When we're looking at taking the tangible action steps that you might need to do so often with clients, there are very little things standing in their way If they can't access something easily, if they don't know where the file is, if they don't know where that piece of content is that they filmed or if just the steps in order to do it is going to take them too much time, you're going to build up these mental barriers in your head.
You're going to come up with these psychological blocks to doing that thing. Because if it feels arduous, if it feels uncomfortable, if you just get that like stressy feeling, I don't know about you, but when I feel clutter around me, my body physically reacts Like I have that sense of like, oh, I just can't do anything right now. And I don't want to do anything right now because I'm so overwhelmed Visually when we are taking in either physical things in our environment or visually on your desktop or in your photos app. When you're taking that in your brain can only process so much at one time and what it does is it overwhelms you. So what Joanna shared is so critically important in our business and how we practice on a daily basis. And again, if there are things that you're procrastinating, if there are things that you're putting off, if there are things that you're unmotivated quote unquote to do, it's likely because there's some sort of roadblock standing in your way and that digital clutter may be exactly that thing standing in your way. So let's talk about some of these spaces in which we're going to clear or declutter through this process. So I did this very recently. Obviously, as we ended the year 2023 and as we headed into 2024, I really wanted a clean slate. I wanted a fresh start. I wanted that sense of newness as I'm heading into the year, getting rid of the old and ushering in the new. So, thinking first about photo and video you are likely a digital creator in some way. As Joanna was mentioning, she runs an agency. She's managing the photo and video of so many folks and, whether it's just you, or whether you work with clients or not, we have to think about the management of that storage.
And there's so much being taught about how to create a content strategy, what type of content you're creating, but no one talks about the physical stuff that you actually have to deal with. What about the albums in your phone? What about the quantity of data that you have? Are you backing it up to the computer? Are you backing it up to a drive? How are you organizing it? What does that look like? So, starting to think about what this looks like for you Everyone's going to have a different system that really makes sense for them and being able to use it on a daily, weekly, consistent basis is important.
So thinking first about how can you separate your content into albums, be role content, think first. Or be role content and be role content, story content, whatever that means in terms of your content creation process and how it's showing up in your social media platforms or in your long form content or in your email marketing. Whatever you share graphically, whether that's coming from Canva and you've created it or whether you're capturing it live. Starting to think about how you're organizing that and then going through your albums Are there old albums that you can get rid of? Are there new albums that you want to create as you head into the new year? And then deciding what's long term and short term. So I went ahead and I backed up my entire phone and I just completely cleared all the photo and video. I only brought back in those things that I wanted to use that were more stock imagery and stock photo for my physical product brand, so that I could create content right away and just pull from that stock video, stock photo album.
But thinking about what you're going to use on the short term and then what you're going to use on the long term. So if you're doing any transformation content and thinking about outcome A versus B. This is where I started. This is where I'm going. You may have older pieces of content that you want to keep around Again, storing them in the right album so that you can easily reference them and go back to them. There's a really easy function in iPhone. I don't know about Android, but you can actually delete duplicates. You can find duplicate photos in your phone and delete them and then, of course, as you're going through, you may have 16. I actually, if anyone can make this a real thing, please do. If you can create an app that can actually analyze and look at all my photos say, I have 16 photos that look very similar, find the best one and delete the rest, praise the digital gods, because that would be amazing. I would be so grateful. Please do that.
0:09:49 - Joanna Newton
Someone should do that and give you a share of the business, because that is a absolutely fabulous idea.
0:09:57 - Michelle Pualani
I've looked for other types of apps like this and I know that there are some in the works and there are things where you can organize. So the next thing about tagging in keywords you can add tags and keywords to your content so you can search more easily, but there really isn't anything to auto detect what is the best from this series and let's just pull that out at least not to my knowledge. So if you do know of something, please send it my way at the Michelle Poulani, because I would be so incredibly grateful. And then really looking through again whether you're going to just offload everything or whether you actually have to go through and manually decide what you're keeping from photo and video. Get rid of those unwanted screenshots I know we all do it. We do it to save information. We do it for the time being, but they're just kind of taking up space and cluttering your library to that extent and then just assessing what are you going to keep.
If you have content that is older content and you're thinking that, oh, I haven't used this yet but I have to use it someday because I already put the time and energy into creating it, I want you to get rid of that sunken cost fallacy for that content creation in the past. If it's lower quality or if you're not actually utilizing it, just get rid of it. It's okay. You're going to create new content, start something fresh, do something new. It's okay to kind of release, delete and let go of some of those things.
You don't have to leverage everything you've ever done. That's one thing that I've had to learn. The hard way is I was so attached and holding on to all of these things that I'd created whether that's products, programs, content and felt like, oh, I have to get everything I can out of this in order for it to have been worth it. Now I'm like, eh, move on, I'm always going to be creating new content. It's always going to be fresh, there's going to be something different. I have a new thought, a new, unique approach, and it's okay to release some of those things that feel a little bit older or outdated.
0:11:42 - Joanna Newton
It's such a great approach and something that we don't always think about when we think about our digital files. When we were born, we didn't have digital files to manage right. We knew when I were born. Now there are some people who are born with digital files to manage, but we didn't right, and so having a digital footprint is a new thing.
One of the things both me and my husband are dealing with right now is our Google storage, since this is personal, not focused on a business or content creation. We both reached our max on our Google storage and are at the point where I'm like do I spend money? I've deleted everything I can, but I have so many years of photos that have value. What do you do with that? And we're deciding if we want to get a hard drive, how we want to store. It's really the old photo memories that we're like how do we store this? Like get them all printed? What do we do here? And there's obviously I know there's tools.
We're more deciding what we want to do with our digital storage than needing to know what to do with it. We're kind of picking the thing that's right for us, but it just really gets more and more and I think sometimes we don't want to throw things out because we think, when it comes to digital, well, what if I need that picture? What if I need that thing? Right, you have to store the things that you think you might use again, but don't be afraid to delete. And it's not different than decluttering a closet, like if you think about your closet when your closet is packed and you can't see anything it's like stressful.
You're probably actually don't wear the best outfits. You don't look the nice because that nice, because it's hard to be creative when there's a ton of clothes. There's too much to see, you have no idea what you have. But when you take that moment to declutter your closet at least I feel this way Every time I take a minute, declutter my closet, reassess what I have, I actually start dressing better because my favorite things are more available. I can see oh wait, I could pair that shirt with that skirt and I never thought about that before. Right, I'm more creative of a dresser when I actually have fewer clothes and I think that feels counterintuitive. But you know, important piece to all of this. So clearing out that clutter can help you be creative digitally and can help you really assess and see what you have.
Another big place that you likely have clutter is on your computer. I don't know if you use Google Drive. You have everything on your desktop. You have everything in your computer files, but you probably have a lot of stuff. So some things to think about is creating folders right, having a foldering system for your content, whether that's in a Google Drive, cloud storage or actually on your computer, depending on how you work. Having folders, having a system for putting those things in a place, can really help you clear out that clutter.
You can get rid of any temporary files, things that you just downloaded so you could print, or you just downloaded to send to one person. You don't need anymore. One thing I have a lot of are screenshots. You know, as I'm working with clients, I might send a screenshot of something to show how something works or get an approval, because it would be complicated to send any other way. Or I'll take a screenshot of something to add a photo somewhere or whatever. It is Tons of screenshots on my desktop that go there automatically and then about once a week I just delete them all. I used them. I can get that screenshot again if I actually need it and I just kind of delete them all. Delete any unnecessary downloads. This is something if you're a digital creator. Maybe you downloaded a version of a video, found an error in it, made a new one, downloaded it again and then you end up having like three versions of the same video. Delete the old versions, right, michelle? You're like laughing because it's so true.
0:15:23 - Michelle Pualani
It's just such a real thing. It's so funny because, again, we don't talk about this kind of thing, but these are all daily realities that we face as online business owners, coaches, creators that we're not addressing and again, it can just build up and it can detract from our focus and our energy.
0:15:41 - Joanna Newton
And then, once you've kind of deleted, you need to organize. So use tags, use labels, create folders, empty your trash, do all the things. Just give yourself a fresh start. One thing I personally feel and I think this sounds like a weird thing, but like you need to figure out your digital organizational style in a way For me I know I've gone into jobs or places when you move jobs a lot of times you inherit like a Google Drive or a One Share or whatever they're called for Outlook. You inherit some sort of drive for your department of content, of digital stuff.
Some people are, like in my opinion, overly folder obsessed, that it's almost harder to find things, like there's folders on top of folders on top of folders, and for me that can be a lot. I try to create the least number of folders that will help me find what I need. So I really try to minimize the number of folders. And then, when it comes to old content, I like to create archive folders. If you have an old version of something, for whatever reason, can't be deleted because you need that for later, like put it in an archive folder, so that way it's there, you have the piece of mind of it existing, but you're not seeing it every day, it's not in your face all of the time. So you want to come up with a system that works for you in terms of organizing, labeling your files and, you know, take that like the least amount you need to do to keep it organized, without overfoldering and having to click 17 times to find exactly what you're looking for.
0:17:20 - Michelle Pualani
What this actually makes me think about on a larger scale is lack and scarcity versus abundance. Thinking so, when we're in that state of like holding onto and scrimping and keeping everything and being worried about oh my gosh, I'm never going to be able to do this again like this, I'm never going to be able to recreate this Then we're not able to usher in the creativity and the opportunity to build and grow and create a new. Yes, it's important to keep old files. Yes, you can go back to them, especially depending on what it is that you do and how that affects your work, especially if you're, say, a content creator for other clients. That client may come back to you a year from now and want to use old files that you filmed or recorded with them. So that's okay. But it's a matter of having that mindset of I have an abundance of creativity within me. I have an abundance of content that I'm going to create as I move forward. I'm going to have an abundance of opportunity moving into the future that I don't need to hold onto and cling so tightly and be attached to some of these things. So just thinking about that kind of again on a larger scale and how that affects you, joanna, covering the digital downloads and what you're actually bringing onto your computer, and then just thinking really briefly about, okay, google Drive, how am I storing things?
So, for me, what I really love to do this is so silly, but I love to number.
So when I get into my drive, it's zero, which is usually like foundational basics, admin, and then one, two, three, four.
So I just number my folders so that they're organized in the order in which I want to see them, and then I like to color code them as well, especially depending on what brand or what business I'm focusing on.
Her first has a nice green tone, color coordination, and when I get in there it's just soothing, it's just calm. We know exactly where the show notes are, we know exactly where the outlines are, we know exactly where our guest information is, and it makes our process, which can be extensive. The process for this podcast can be up to five plus hours a week. So being able to have that organization makes such a huge difference. So just really thinking about in the cloud whether that is Google Drive, dropbox, whatever program you use thinking about how you can actually start to kind of get rid of some of those old things, some of those duplicates, and really just kind of deleting that old clutter, that old stuff as you kind of head into the new year and then thinking about what you want that to look like as you move forward and being strategic and intentional about that.
0:19:51 - Joanna Newton
I realized that as we're going through this content and thinking about what we're talking about. Maybe it could feel trivial right, cleaning folders, organizing things, labeling, making things look pretty. You might think that's trivial, but this is a really important. Note to make is that I worked in the corporate setting for 10 years and if I added up the amount of time that I had to tell someone where a document was, it would be weeks, a year of my time spent helping people find things. I was a person who was good at finding things, understood the organization of things. So, as yourself, the amount of time you will save if you know where everything is and you put it hopefully eventually put it in the right place in the first time, then you're going to be more productive and efficient. And then, in a corporate setting, if you're that person who knows where everything is, you're going to waste a lot of time helping everyone else find things or being the one organizing your system. That actually makes you think about the importance of, as you grow and scale your business, having an organized system where everything is where you expect it to be, and then training your team on how to find things where things are and then being consistent with that will. If you grow to, you know having multiple employees, that could save you thousands of dollars a month. Right, so it feels trivial, but there's actual money you can save in your business by being organized like this and time you can save in your business in this way. And that really makes me think of like.
The next sort of area that we want to talk about today is your software and online systems. You may use a project management tool. If you're in the video world, you might have video editing software. I have tools that I use to review content with clients. Markup is a tool we use to review web pages and get feedback. Frameio is another tool that we use to share videos to allow clients to provide, like in timestamped feedback to their videos.
All of these different places there's digital clutter and I can't tell you the amount of times like I've walked into a new organization or job and they're like this is our project management tool, where we have all of our projects and there's like 100 overdue tasks and you're like what is happening here? Like how do you even know what to do, because there's all of this stuff in the way. So keeping your project management tool up to date and clean any system you do that holds storage that you use, taking some time to clean those out as well. Using the same concept delete what you don't need, keep what you need to keep. Maybe it goes to a hard drive, maybe it stays there in a foldered system. Just going through all of your online software needs to be a part of this process.
0:22:50 - Michelle Pualani
It may seem benign I totally get that and it may seem like we're getting into the nitty gritty of small things that you probably don't think are important and you may think, hey, it's just me right now. But if you want to think and envision yourself of that again seven, eight figure larger entrepreneur they will say one you have to start with the end in mind, which means that you need to envision yourself as that person now and think and act strategically. I think that there's a really great example of this. So CEO takes over I think what is Virgin Airlines at the time and it was essentially failing and he came in, revamped the company and actually set it on the trajectory to be one of the most successful. I'm blowing the details, but you're getting the picture. So when asked, what did he do differently and how did he turn the company around, he responded with I just imagined and envisioned where we wanted to be and I started taking actions as if we were already there. You have to start thinking, acting, doing on a daily basis as that person, that business, that entity that you are wanting to be at some point. You cannot use the same habits, beliefs, patterns, systems. Take the actions of what you have always done and expect different results. So, again, thinking about how this applies to your life, to your business, in a way that really really tracks with where you're headed, and thinking about the automation, the systems. Really, it's those atomic habits, it's those small micro things that impact your time, your energy, investments in a really big way.
So the next topic we're going to cover are applications. Again, you can think about it in terms of like, oh, I'm just going to go through all my applications, decide what I'm using, what I'm not using. That's a good place to start, but here's the simple process that I took. So I went through every single app, assessing whether I use it or not on a consistent enough basis. I also thought about can I actually just use this on the desktop or laptop and then not use it on my phone as a distraction tool? Because, again, how many times have you pulled up your phone, gone to do something particular, spent 10 or 15 minutes, put it down and then be like, ah, I didn't even do that thing that I was supposed to do.
So this is about getting rid of those distractions. So, after I have deleted all of the apps that I'm no longer going to use, I actually went through and I removed each of the apps from my home screen. So instead of organizing them into folders or putting them in a certain place, I just removed them from the home screen altogether, so I don't see any of the apps when I actually pull up my phone. You can still see them and they're still available when you look at your app library. And then you can go in and you can search very intentionally for the thing that you're getting on to do, instead of seeing your phone looking at Instagram and saying like, oh, I'm going to get in there first and then I'm going to do that other thing.
And then I reformatted the background, so just changed over my background image to a vision board to think more intentionally about how I'm heading into the new year. I adjusted my widgets and put up only those things that I feel like I use most consistently my calendar, the weather app and then I actually added Oasis. It's a great app and software tool that I've recently been using for content creation ideas. So it's like a recording app and it turns your recording into a transcript and outline, a blog, like all of these different things that you can source for content when you have an idea, super helpful.
And then on my lock screen I added the Oasis, I added Spotify and just anything that I wanted to jump to really quickly without having to unlock my phone and get in there Again, decluttering that visual space, so that I can stay focused. And then I can stay intentional whenever I grab my phone, because my phone is a tool I use for my business and I don't want it to be a place of distraction and I don't want it to be a place where I just get into it, procrastinate and don't do the thing that I intended to do.
0:26:52 - Joanna Newton
The next thing that's really good to look at is your overall digital footprint on social media. On whatever social media platforms you're on, you likely have photos, your name, your title, a bio, you know, visuals and things like that. And this step is not just for people who have an intentional social media presence. This is for anybody, because if you're applying for a job, if you are making connections, if you're talking to people, people are going to look you up online, whether you're trying to be a creator or an influencer or anything like that. You go to a party, you meet new people. They're going to look you up on their social media of choice and you know what An old thing that just doesn't represent you. And then, especially if you're even just applying for jobs and don't plan to be a digital creator, your visual presence really can make an impact.
One of the things that always really bothers me is when I do interviews for roles. A lot of times you know I'll look people up on their LinkedIn profile and the number of times someone's photo of what they look like and then what they look like in real life is just different because they took that photo in a completely different life stage. It always just takes me a minute to like recalibrate who they are, because I went and I looked at their profile, I saw who they were, I looked at their background and then, like, when I meet with them in person, there's 10 more years of experience and a different person standing in front of me Because they left things out on their LinkedIn profile. They're just different than they were. And so then my first impression of that person and then who that person really is are two different things.
0:28:31 - Michelle Pualani
That's such a great point to make because, as we're looking at guests who are interested in being on this podcast, I have to go through and assess whether they're a good candidate or a good fit.
Same thing, joanna she has to look at those people and say are they a good fit for our podcast? And I am looking at the professionalism of that person online. I'm looking at their audio quality, their video quality, how they present themselves on their websites and their pages and what it is that they're communicating through their messaging. So if we have 50 people who expressed interest in getting on the podcast, we're not just going to say, okay, let's bring on all those 50 people. I've whittled that down to under 20, which means over 30 of those folks didn't necessarily communicate their expertise or authority in a way that I wanted to bring them onto a podcast. So if you are out there as a coach, a creator, an online business owner saying I want more opportunities, you need to think about how you're reflecting in the online space for those people to say, yes, I'm going to give you that opportunity because of what you're bringing to the table.
0:29:33 - Joanna Newton
Whether or not you have an active content creation strategy. Just having that profile is super important. So when you're doing that refresh, you just want to make sure your name, your title, your bio, all of those things are accurate and still represent you. Maybe you have a newer photo that you want to update. Maybe you want to do those things, refresh any visuals. So if it's Facebook and LinkedIn where you can have a cover photo, maybe update that cover photo if it just doesn't fit anymore.
The amount of times I take it on a client who we go, we audit all their socials and they have a cover photo that's promoting. First of all, don't promote an event in a cover photo. This is not an episode on social media content, but do not promote events in a cover photo on a social site. Now, the amount of times I come across the fact that they're promoting an event in their cover photo that was two years ago pretty amazing how often that happens. Look at those things. Is anything out of date? Does anything need to be taken down, update, changed?
Look at your link tree. Do you have 75 things you're promoting and five of them are old? Look through your posts. Do you have a giveaway still up that's already closed? Do you have a discount that you are promoting that's already over? What can you just kind of pare down and clean up so nothing's out of date?
And then, depending on what platform you're on, you know if you're on Instagram and there's highlights or your pinned posts, just take some time to just update them and make sure they make sense with who you are at that moment and what is going on. Really, that process doesn't need to take that long. It can feel like it would take a long, but a lot of things you go on there and you're just like fix this, fix this, fix this, and it just feels refreshed and new. On some platforms there's even an added benefit there, like on LinkedIn. When you change your profile, you can send an update. So everybody sees that you changed your profile picture and everybody's like, oh, looking good, and comments, and sometimes those things can actually be really engaging posts, right. So it's kind of important to just think through that process and make sure everything's up to date.
0:31:36 - Michelle Pualani
I think I need to go through all of my social platforms and just ensure everything's up to date. It's been on my mind, actually, so I recently did it, probably back in October, but it's time for the new year because I got a whole new thing, a whole new shtick. Someone say the last big section that we're gonna chat about is probably actually the most important when it comes to making money in the online space and how you're presenting yourself. It's really your customer journey. So that includes your landing pages, your freebies and your funnels. We're not gonna get into the details of really how and what to do with this. We're actually gonna talk a little bit more about that in part two.
When it comes to organizing, maintaining and moving forward after you've decluttered, things to just start to think about in terms of decluttering, looking through, sorting through and what can you delete, what can you get rid of, what can you optimize, change or put on your calendar to improve as you head into the new year Freebies, guides and opt-in pages. So anything that your prospective audience is seeing as an initial interest are they still relevant? Are they guides that are applicable to where they are in their journey at this time as we head into a new year or is it outdated? Do you need to change the headline? Does any of the copy need to be adjusted? And not saying that you're doing that right now, but as you're assessing it, knowing that it's something that you have to address Any auto emails that are associated with that? Are any of the links broken? Did anything happen in the meantime since you started it or since you put it into practice? Checking those emails, making sure again anything is still relevant, if anything is outdated? I get emails from people all the time of dates that have already passed, and immediately one. I don't want to be engaged in what they're doing now because I feel like it's outdated, it's not relevant anymore or it doesn't apply to me because of that. So, really thinking about where you have anything that is time bound, changing that and then just updating Does the language still reflect who you are as a person and what you're bringing to the table? Also, when I go back and look at things, I see all the things that it can be improved, because I'm better now than I was when I wrote it the first time, and that's okay. Sales pages this is a much bigger lift Again. We're not gonna get into the details on this, but looking at anything that you might actually need to archive. I worked with a client once who had like I can't even tell you hundreds of pages, hundreds of offers, hundreds of opt-ins and all these things, and all of this stuff was still live, even though it was broken or not available, and it's not to say that a ton of traffic is going to it. But if someone happens upon the page and it's not good reflection of where you are in business right now, then I just take it down, archive it, hide it, make sure it's not showing up to the real world.
Sorting through your products and programs what is not relevant anymore for where you are, what is something that you maybe wanna update and revamp in the new year or delete Again, get rid of. So sorting through the products, the programs, the workshops, all of the digital assets that you have thinking through those at this time. Thinking about your templates Do your email marketing templates, again, reflect the business that you are wanting to envision and create for yourself in the new year, as well as, obviously, your email marketing content? Are your links updated? Does everything reflect where you are at this particular time or not? Is anything unnecessary? Maybe you have too many social media handles at the bottom of your email and no one's going to any of them. Take them out, organizing marketing lists and contacts. Now you should be doing this consistently in their automated ways in your email marketing in order to clean the subscribers from your list in a more wholesome way. Now you wanna do this in order to usually cap your expenditure right Cause if you have 100,000 people on your email list but only 20,000 of those are actually active subscribers engaged, you're probably paying a lot more money than you should for your email marketing and in terms of your open rate, your engagement, your click through all of those numbers, they can be much improved if you actually just lean up that list and get it down to those people who are your core community and engaging with you on a consistent and regular basis.
Keyword lists and SEO strategy thinking through again those tags, those labels, all of those things that you utilize either in your social media content or on your website are they still relevant?
Are they still searchable?
Are people actually looking for those things any longer?
Any legal and compliance documents or policies that you have, privacy policy, terms of use all of those things are they up to date with one, what's expected in the online space and, again, reflecting your business and where you are.
I've actually looked at privacy and terms. I was looking at this mastermind and some of the pricing that was listed in their terms didn't reflect what they were currently charging. Right now you wanna make sure that those things are aligned. It's important, of course, not lastly, cause there are so many things to look at in this particular topic. But thinking about your collaborations, your partnerships, your affiliate links is there anywhere that you're referring people that has changed, updated, adjusted, if you have links in your articles or your blogs, looking at that and making sure that everything is in alignment. So just starting to again think through a lot of those things what is front-facing, what is a customer going to see, what is your audience going to see, and really analyzing that so that you're not missing out on any opportunities for them to engage with you, for them to click through that link to purchase and to do the thing that you want them to do.
0:37:02 - Joanna Newton
One of the first things I always do when I start a new job in the marketing world. I mean, I'm probably never gonna start a new job again, but when I was in the corporate world and was starting a new job is exactly what you're talking about, michelle I would go through every landing page, every email sequence, everything, and yes, it would take time, but just make sure anything that wasn't relevant anymore had just gone away. Right, you can put things in draft mode. You can delete things that should be deleted, but put a lot of things in draft so that the world can't see them or get to them. That can help you have a lot of clarity on your business and sometimes big problems in your sales funnels can get solved by doing this, by going through this, and then in the next episode we're gonna talk about what to do next in this area. Really dig into. You've cleaned up your offers, your freebies, it's all cleaned up. Now what? How do you make your business work for you in that way? But taking the time to do that is super important and it's so easy for it to get recluttered. It just is when you're creating, when you're doing things, it's so easy for it to all get back out of control. The other thing that you wanna look at and assess in this process are your online subscriptions, and I've got a funny story on this one.
I was part of some pretty ruthless layoffs. At one point in my career. There was like a massive round of layoffs affecting field employees and I was in the field at the time and then I moved to the corporate side of the company and like a month after joining the corporate side of the company, like everybody got laid off. It was like horrifying. That could be another conversation for another day about that experience. But I ended up being one of the very few people left on the corporate marketing team at the end of all of it, and one of the things I was tasked with was looking through all of the marketing subscriptions. I got this spreadsheet of every marketing subscription that the company was currently paying for. I had to go through each one, figure out if we could cancel it, figure out if we needed it, figure out who is using it, and I found so many subscriptions that hadn't been used in years that were just continuing to be getting paid for because someone needed it. Once it got on a corporate card somewhere, it just kept renewing over and over and over again. So because everyone was gone, it was awful. It was a process, but it actually felt really good that I, like you, know the company was struggling. They had to lay people off. They didn't have money. Some of that were these duplicate email CRMs with hundreds of thousands of content. This is a lot of money spent, and going through those subscriptions can be really powerful. This is something I just did for Millennial Marketer.
Been in business for a little over a year now. There were subscriptions that we started as monthly because it being a monthly payment made sense. We didn't know if we were going to use it forever, but as our system solidified what we need, switching to yearly does a bunch of things. One, it saves you money, right Like it can save you. You can save 25, 40% even on your subscriptions if you pay for them a year at a time. But it also helps with digital declutter for that subscription. Instead of having 12 receipts and 12 bank transactions to pay attention to, I have one receipt and one bank transaction a year and if you do that across 15 subscriptions, well, that makes a really big difference. That's going to save me time when I do my financials every month and look through what we've spent and what we've done, when each month I only have one subscription I'm accounting for, instead of 12 every single month that I'm looking at making sure the bill went through and all of that.
So looking at your subscriptions, being mindful of them, getting rid of what you don't use, simplifying things, moving to yearly If it makes sense, if it's something you're sure you're using all of the time, is something to take some time to do.
0:41:06 - Michelle Pualani
So we've covered a lot about personal devices. We've talked about online storage, as Joanna mentioned. We are going to take up part two, where we're going to talk about organizing and maintaining. So what does it look like as you move forward? Because decluttering is one thing Now you've got a clean slate but what happens in order to keep that going? And if this is the first time that you've done this and you're doing it after a year, multiple years, it can feel like a lie. It can feel really overwhelming. What if you did this on a more consistent basis? What if there was a weekly system, a daily system, a monthly system, a quarterly system or something that was in place so that you felt confident about your automations, about your clutter, and that you were actually maintaining this on a more consistent basis? Well, we're going to talk all about that in part number two.
0:41:55 - Joanna Newton
This is where decluttering becomes a habit, not just a yearly event, becomes part of just what you do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis to keep your systems clean and fresh, keep you organized, keep you productive. And I do want to highlight something, michelle, slightly unrelated, that you said earlier in this episode. Did you say we've had an episode with 2,000 downloads?
0:42:23 - Michelle Pualani
Just about. We're very close to 2,000 downloads for our reflection of 2023.
0:42:30 - Joanna Newton
That's so exciting, and I want to take the moment to send our appreciation to all of you who listen, whether it's one episode every single week, however, you engage with us. We really appreciate you being part of our community, and you can always take a further step in connecting with us by joining our private Facebook group, the Her First Collective. There will be a link in the description here. If you want to talk about digital declutter or any of the topics that we talk about on the podcast, please join us there. We're really excited to get to connect with you on a deeper level. So that wraps up another episode of Her First. Thanks for joining us in decluttering your digital life.
