I F**d Up!

Yes, the title says it all. But the truth is I REALLY f**d up!

Not only did I f*** it up, I was called out for it.

We've all made mistakes before, we've all screwed up things in our content, in our online presence for our businesses and our brands. But sometimes when you're deep in it on a daily basis, you lose sight of what you're doing.

This is Nick. Nick knows his sh**.

A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of spending some time on a Zoom call with Nick Dio from VaynerMedia. Nick and I have known each other for a couple of years, through my interactions with VaynerMedia and Gary Vee.

As the conversation moved from “how’s the team?”, to “how’s business?”, Nick was able to articulate something I couldn’t see. I needed outside eyes to realize my own stupid mistake. The Ad Zombies brand, (my business brand voice) had been clouded by my personal, @spankymoskowitz brand voice.

Now, for those of you who have businesses, and for those of you that are in growth mode, it's critical that you get this right. I messed it up by letting them cross-pollinate, causing the wrong message to be served to the wrong audience. Or, if you want to think of it in slightly more positive terms, the right message being served to the wrong audience.

If you're growing your business and your personal brand simultaneously, you need to look at them as two separate entities.

So how do you fix something you break? You break it again! Today I'm documenting all these things that I'm doing, but not every piece of content that I do for my personal brand belongs on Ad Zombies brand pages. Meanwhile, I’ve been so focused on the content documentation of my personal brand that I’ve lost some of the snarkiness and the voice of the Ad Zombies brand. OK, that’s a lie. The brand has lost lots of its snark and attitude, or, snark-ittude.

How come I couldn’t see it? That answer is easy. Stand in front of a mirror and get so close to it you only see your right eyeball. You can’t see the big picture when you’re so tightly focused, you need to zoom out to see the face, the body, and the world. I had been eyeballs deep in content, but not looking at them contextually. I needed that outside perspective from someone like Nick.

Nick is a good guy, super smart, and a very cool, dude, but he called me out. “You’re losing your brand voice,” he said.

Whether you own a business, work for a business, are a social media manager for business, you can easily lose your brand voice. It’s surprisingly easy for them to become diluted or cloudy.

Not only was I creating content at such a fast pace (thanks to documenting, not creating) we’d also found a super-efficient way to distribute the content. And because it was SO EASY to share everything everywhere, we overdid it. Big time. One piece of content was going to all the channels: multiple platforms, multiple brands, multiple audiences. It felt GREAT publishing that much content, but there was a problem: that sexy “we published so much” feeling was masking our failures.

We realized (thanks again to Nick for helping us see the light) that one piece of content does NOT just go everywhere. We need to match the needs of the audience, the platform, and the brand we’re posting from.

So, we pushed the pause button on how we're distributing our content and got down to clearing things up, deciding how to do things differently.

It's important that you do this kind of audit for your business. If you're growing your business and your personal brand simultaneously, you need to look at them as two separate entities. For me, it began that way, but it didn't end up the way I had envisioned. The content I'm sharing about business growth, executing, and how I've grown the business…those pieces don't necessarily fit with what Ad Zombies shares.

So why am I'm sharing these mistakes with you? I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I’ve made. Because I'm documenting and sharing the mistakes that I make, I'm showing you the accidents as they happen, and the things that I’ve learned from them.

When you're creating or documenting content for your business, think about this before you publish: who is your target audience? Then, make sure your content is going on the right platform with the right voice for the right person.

Because if you don't, you'll end up with this mess that we're in the middle of unwinding. And it was all my doing. I F**d up!