The Social Media Success Workbook · Online
Do the thinking.
We will read it.
Ten sections of the workbook, online, saving as you go. Answer what you can and skip what you cannot.
When you are done we write you a real assessment: your mission in one sentence, an honest reading of where you are strong and where you are thin, a month by month path, and what the likely outcomes are. Written by our engine, edited by a person here, sent to your inbox.
There is no obligation attached to any part of this, and nobody will ring you. If you take the assessment and go and do it yourself, that is a good outcome and we will have meant it.
§ 01
Make the Change Now
The one change that almost nobody actually makes.
[ "Almost everyone who fills in a workbook like this one already knows what they want. What stops them is not the knowing. It is that wanting something and deciding to have it are two different acts, and only the second one puts anything in motion.", "So start there. Three questions, honestly answered, and then a ladder that turns the answer into a date." ]
For instance: Start a new business that benefits myself and other people.
For instance: I would be much happier. I would be able to help others.
For instance: I do not have the time. I do not have the money. I do not have the connections.
For instance: I will set up these things.
For instance: I will take these steps.
For instance: I will open a new business or organization.
For instance: Have a successful business, be fit and healthy, have good relationships.
§ 03
Write About Yourself
Who you are, what you do, and what your message is.
[ "Write these in your own voice, badly if necessary. Nobody is grading the prose, and a rough paragraph that sounds like you is worth more to us than a polished one that sounds like a brochure. This is the raw material every profile and every post is built from." ]
In your own voice. This is what your profiles will be built from.
The one sentence you would put on a wall.
What you are here to do.
What you want people to walk away believing.
§ 04
What Are Your Interests
What you stand for, and what you will not stand for.
[ "An account that is against nothing is for nothing, and reads that way. This section is where your posts get their edge, and it is also where we learn what to keep you away from." ]
Subjects you could talk about all day, without preparing.
Subjects, people, or positions that are off limits for you. We will honor this without asking why.
§ 05
How to Add Value
The first rule of entrepreneurship.
[ "Nobody has ever been paid for existing. Every business that works is a transfer: something is worth more after you touch it than before. Henry Ford did not invent the car, he made it something a man on his own production line could afford. Malcolm McLean did not invent the ship or the truck, he put the same steel box on both and cut the cost of moving goods across an ocean to almost nothing.", "Neither of them added a product. They removed a cost. That is what this section is asking you to find." ]
One real person is better than a category. Describe someone you have actually dealt with.
Communities, clubs, associations, professional bodies, online groups.
§ 06
Value, Proven
Five companies that added nothing but a better idea.
[ "Dollar Shave Club did not make a better razor. Warby Parker did not invent the spectacle. Airbnb never built a hotel. In each case the company found the exact moment where a customer hesitated, felt embarrassed, or had to take a risk, and removed it at their own cost.", "That moment exists in your business too. Most owners know precisely what it is and have stopped noticing it, because they have been apologising for it for years." ]
Be honest. It is usually the price, the wait, the paperwork, or the fear of choosing wrong.
Name the cost. If it is affordable, you have just found your offer.
§ 07
Make an Irresistible Offer
An offer so good that saying no feels expensive.
[ "Domino's did not promise a better pizza. They promised it in thirty minutes and put money behind the clock. Zappos did not promise better shoes. They promised you could send them back for a year, both ways, free, and Amazon bought the company for a reported $1.2 billion.", "The offer is not the product. The offer is what you are willing to put at risk to make saying yes easy." ]
Write it as one sentence, the way a customer would hear it.
Say exactly what you will do if you fail to deliver.
Names, and what they said. Paste them in.
§ 08
Your Goals
We want to know them so that we can help you reach them.
The number or the moment you would point to.
Daily and weekly. The unglamorous things that compound.
§ 09
Your Network
Friends, family, and acquaintances.
[ "The first hundred people who see your work are almost never strangers. They are the contacts already in your phone, the groups you already belong to, and the customers you already have. Every account that grows quickly grows out of that warm layer first, because those are the people who will comment on a post when it has no comments yet, which is the only thing that makes the next stranger stop." ]
An honest estimate. Nobody counts these exactly.
WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups, trade associations, alumni lists, Reddit communities.
Name them. This is the list we start with.
Paste the links or write the handles, one per line. Write none if you are starting from nothing, which is completely normal.
§ 10
What You Already Have
The raw material, before anyone writes a word.
[ "Nothing here has to be produced. It has to be found. The heating contractor in the printed book had four years of photographs of catastrophic boiler installations sitting on his phone, and that turned out to be better content than an agency could have invented.", "Tell us what is already sitting on your phone, in your drafts, or in your head." ]
Photographs, before-and-after shots, past writing, talks, a newsletter, customer questions you answer every week.
The thing you are tired of repeating is almost always your best post.
There is no wrong answer. It changes what we build, not whether it works.
§ 16
Ninety Days, Three Businesses
Find the one that looks most like yours.
[ "The printed workbook follows three businesses through their first ninety days: a two-practitioner physiotherapy clinic, an independent management consultant, and a family heating and cooling contractor with nine vans. They are composites, not clients, and the details are illustrative.", "What is not illustrative is the shape. In all three the raw material came from the owner and everything after that was done for them." ]
The photographs, the opinions, or the thing you explain to every customer anyway.
The last bit
Where shall we send it?
You have answered 0 of 48. That is a little thin; 12 is where the assessment starts being worth reading.
Still blank and load-bearing: What is it that you truly want to accompli…, Write about who you are, Write about what you do, What is your mission?, How does what you are doing increase value?, Who are you offering it to?, Which part of buying from you is the annoy…, What are you offering?, What do you want to accomplish?, What do you already have that could be pos…