If you ask any teenager or someone in their early 20's how they like to receive their social media content, a lot of them will probably say stories. Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, Snapchat Stories, and even YouTube already released their own version of stories. Telling a good story on social media seems simple, but it's a lot more complicated than it might seem. There are a million questions going through your head; what do I put out? How do I get people to stay connected to my story? How do I grab attention? All of these questions are very valid and are not easy to answer because most of it relates to where you are in your business and your industry. However, the good news is, when creating stories, none of it really matters.

Happy President's Day Weekend for those of us in the States and Happy Post Valentine's Day for everyone across the world that celebrates it. Even if you don't celebrate either holiday, it's always a great day to celebrate yourself! Why? Because it's super important to acknowledge your accomplishments as a human being. What have you done with your life in the last week? Last month? Last year? It's very easy for us entrepreneurs to get really stuck in the "un-accomplishments" or the goals we haven't met in Q1, but I would like to celebrate a win. My mentor Rachel Pedersen, does this in her group and she calls them Wins-days. Every Wednesday she tells everyone to post your wins for the week, no matter how big or small. It's so important to share wins you guys, especially on social media. You will be surprised at how many people will have similar wins!

This past week SPB Productions was at the Facebook Community Boost conference in Atlanta, GA and it was an amazing experience. The Facebook Community Boost conference is a three day event held in almost every major city in the United States. The goal is to help entrepreneurs and corporations with their Facebook and Instagram pages. The event offered free - in person training from real Facebook experts and they also had booths where business owners can learn a lot of cool stuff that can really help their brand on Facebook and Instagram! I took down a lot of notes and I even got to speak to an expert about some of the pages I handle! Here's what I learned:

We are on our phone daily as a society. Whether we are talking to a family member, texting our friends, or taking a picture of that salted caramel donut that you had for National Donut Day yesterday and posting it on Instagram. As a society, we crave the attention and we crave the approval we seek from others. This is why social media is so popular, especially on mobile devices. If you are a business that deals with e-commerce then according to the famous Mary Meeker Social Media Trends List, you would've seen a drastic increase in sales over the years if you were marketing on social media.

When a person starts their business, it's usually out of necessity, for me it was me being tired of the corporate scene (okay well I still am in the corporate scene but it is not as bad) and I was done with people not listening to my ideas. It's Mother's Day, and I've been wanting to do a blog post about my mom for a while now. A lot of people find inspiration for their businesses within their kids, significant others, siblings, or even within themselves. Me? I found my inspiration within myself, and my mom. I was in a rough situation and I wondered what my mother would've told me. I know she would've said "Supriya, if you are unhappy then find happiness elsewhere". So I did.

Internet trolls have been around ever since the first website went live and even then, trolls weren't as mean as they are today. Hiding behind a username to say horrible things to another person that you don't know is a very dark part of the internet that started on forum boards and comment sections on blogs like these. It has now transcended to social media sites and unfortunately the troll game has gotten a lot bigger and smarter. Most people will create new accounts if they have been banned from a forum or a social media site and the cycle of harassment will continue with little to no admin or moderator intervention.

As a small business owner, the most important thing to note in 2018 is the fact that social media is getting personal. The algorithm is noticing how people interact with others on their specific platform and will most likely adjust. Remember, Facebook also owns Instagram so they too are looking into making a separate messenger entity just like Facebook. This is also important to note since private messaging has surpassed social media apps, as you can see in the graph below, more people spend more time private messaging than on the actual social media app.

When the control is put in the internet provider's hands, it's open season for all websites. While Facebook, Google and Apple will hardly face any issues with their websites slowing down, smaller named companies might have a different fate. This will affect companies Google rankings greatly, as website speed is a huge factor in ranking highly in Google.

Almost everyone can relate to the holidays in the Western part of the world and it's the reason why you should change your profile and cover photos to reflect the holidays. Another way you can get a wider reach is to make fun blogs, create a Facebook contest that is holiday related, and engage with potential customers by doing a cute graphics.

In this age of streaming content, everything can and must be recorded, uploaded, and liked at a customer or users will on social media. While streamed and mostly unsaved content apps like SnapChat have been a popular tool for millennials and Gen Z'ers alike, it also has a growing user base for older generations as well. One of these apps that is gaining traction among the older generation is Instagram. Ever since Instagram was bought out by Facebook five years ago, Instagram has exploded in popularity. Small businesses of all generations have embraced Instagram as more food and lifestyle bloggers discover their favorite cupcake spot.

Made famous by celebs like Ashton Kutcher, Twitter was known for it's microblogging platform, paving the way for other social media sites like Tumblr to images instead of words to post on their blogs or pages in a short amount of time. Since its debut at the South by Southwest festival in 2006, Twitter has been notorious for its 140 character feature. Twitter is used all around the world, in countries like Japan, South Africa and Germany where the languages don't always fit the 140 character mold. Creativity plays a big part in getting messages across Twitter, and emojis have had a huge hand in this, however words still play a huge part in marketing even though video content is slowly taking over. How's this a good thing? I'll explain.

Since its inception in 2010, Instagram has exploded on to the social media scene as being one of the top social media platforms of the last decade. Filters, tags, and selfies has made Instagram a must-have on every smartphone today and with over 700 million users, Instagram has no sign of slowing down. In 2012, Instagram sold their business over to Facebook, which took it to another level, integrating their features for easier sharing on mobile devices. As a result, ads on Instagram have now become a huge deal.

It's no secret that social media has really taken off in the last twelve years. I mean looking at Facebook alone, which has grown at an incredible exponential rate over the last 5-10 years, it has changed dramatically and has arguably been the center of many social media trends. The truth of the matter is that social media has become more visual and dynamic. With gifs and videos with captions taking over the ranks of Facebook, texts posts have become a thing of the past.

What's with the rise of women entrepreneurship? Many believe it is because of the shrinking opportunities in the workplace for women, especially women of color. Sexism and racism has been a hot topic in the news for the last five to ten years, even more so with our current president. A combination of the market crash in 2008 and institutional racism has made it harder for women of color to break the glass ceiling in technology.