Are you planning for 2022? Social media is ever-evolving and changing, you need to keep up. Here I laid out the 5 trends I am seeing in social media for 2022.

Empaths or highly sensitive people are probably one of the most misunderstood groups on the planet. We are sensitive to loud noises and sounds, so we can't always be in large areas. Imagine being an empathic entrepreneur, someone who constantly has to go out, shake hands, and meet people all day. How would that feel? Some of you might get energy just from meeting so many people, for empaths we are different. Most of us were probably misunderstood our entire lives, I know I was. I was seen as the weird kid, the quiet kid, the kid that just wanted to be left alone with her one or two friends. I didn't really care how people viewed me cause I knew I was different, however it was on a different level when I became an entrepreneur.

A lot of people who aren't familiar with social media strategists or social media managers will have no idea what in the heck they do. In fact, this is probably the most commonly asked question I get. "What do you actually DO?" "Do you just play around on Facebook all day?" "I mean, why do I have to pay you to post the same thing on social media? I can get my little cousin/nephew/daughter to do that." I am going to debunk five common myths or maybe the most common attitudes that business owners have about social media strategists or managers.

There's so much content that is posted on social media, in fact, it was 777 million posts in 2019 according to Buffer. Most businesses are trying to adjust to the new normal right now, and it's social media that is going to take all of those companies to the next level. Why should you focus on social media? It's simple. The average person spent 2 hours and 24 minutes on Facebook in 2020, which is more than double the previous year. CEOs are more than willing to put their ads on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube these days because there is more time being spent on those platforms, especially the mobile apps, more than ever. This begs the question stated above: what kind of content should I post?

There's a lot of social media sites that I talk about, but Pinterest is one of the social media sites that I talk about the least. I am not sure why either. Pinterest does have a lot to offer, besides the users being 75% women, and with it being a top search engine site. It's actually a great site, it's up 51 million users from last year alone! The growth is fantastic and if you are a brand that focuses on women or women related services and/or products then Pinterest is the place to be! I guess it's because Pinterest is very image oriented, not video related, but all of that is about to change!

I've said this before many times, your reputation matters on social media! The amount of social media users is projected to hit 3 BILLION, that's right BILLION in 2020. That's a little less than the world population! How crazy is that? How many people are talking about your brand right now? Probably not as much as you want them to right? How many people are writing reviews on Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, GlassDoor, Amazon or eBay? Not as much as you want them to? Don't worry, this is a common issue for most brands! If you don't have a solid social media strategy, and if you have a solid service or product, you could still have people talking negatively about your brand.

It's been said time and time again, if you don't have the right tools, you will not succeed. The same goes for social media management. If you don't have the right things in place (a website, funnel, a budget, lead magnets, landing pages, etc) you will not succeed. As my dad likes to say, there are different ways to skin a cat (that line still makes me cringe). There are some tools I use to ensure that my clients are happy with my work. In this blog post, I've laid out a few, you can use either in addition to what you are already doing or as a guide.

Have you ever heard of Vine? It used to be a fun little app where people could make fun little videos for under 30 seconds. You can see a bunch of vine compilations that people made on YouTube right here. It was definitely game-changing for those businesses who market to the millennial and Gen Z audience. Since then an app called Musical.ly came up, which is similar to Vine but incorporated music into the videos. Bytedance (the company that owned Musical.ly) bought TikTok and put in similar themes. You may be asking at this point, why should I care about a music app for my business? Here are three reasons why you should be using it!

All over social media, we see people bragging about the "omgz I got 5,000 likes this weekend from that one selfie I took of myself over by the Coachella stage!" metrics that we see might be a thing of the past. Instagram just tested out hiding likes on images in an effort to reduce vanity metrics. In fact, according to that same article, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, says that if he were to start Twitter all over again he wouldn't "emphasize the ‘like’ count as much. I don’t think I would even create ‘like’ in the first place, because it doesn’t actually push what we believe now to be the most important thing". That's really powerful coming from the social media giant! With all of this being said, what kind of metrics are being considered as a thing of the past on social media according to experts?

Whether you are a big business or a tiny little startup, social media marketing is a fundamental tool to have in your marketing strategy in 2019. We are in Q2, which means if you don't have something in motion for your social media already, you will be very behind. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, social media is a MUST-HAVE for businesses these days. Unless you are an expert (like me) in it, you are probably going to be making a lot of rookie mistakes. Which is okay! Nobody is perfect at everything. I know I wasn't when I started (heck I am still learning!). I've laid out the five rookie mistakes that you should probably fix right now on social media.

I cannot say enough good things about LinkedIn, not only is it where I find the majority of my clients, but it's an amazing place to network and meet with other professionals in your area. It's also where recruiters live these days, if you're job hunting, LinkedIn is the best way to score a top paying job. It's also one of those social media sites left untouched after all the stuff that's happened with Facebook and Twitter (Instagram is also left unharmed), and is rolling out new features almost every month (LinkedIn Live for instance) What if you don't have a LinkedIn profile? It's 2019, it's time to get on LinkedIn.

If there is one question I get from clients, it's "how can I get more reach with my social media pages? Can't I just post about my products (or services)? " and the answer is to stop selling on social media! The way to sell on social media is to NOT sell and you've probably heard me saying that over and over again on these posts. It's true, you have to think of your brand as someone's best friend on social media, while you may have that one friend that's ALWAYS selling you their LuLARoe Leggings (we all have that friend), most people on social media share what they eat, their big milestones, accomplishments, who inspired them, and much more. If your social media isn't getting the reach you want, it's time to start thinking about getting personal.

So, you're are one of the millions of business owners in the world that doesn't like to use social media managers or graphic artists to create art on social media. There's a lot of you out there that don't want to spend a lot of money on a graphic designer, I get it. However that leaves a lot of you with no idea what to do otherwise. You want your content to look like Gary Vee without the Gary Vee budget. A lot of you are going to say it's not possible. Well I am here to say it's not IMpossible.

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.

The two biggest questions I get about social media marketing are: How can I monetize my content and how can I gain leads? I talk a lot about social media here, but I don't really talk about what you need to have in place to monetize your pages. If you have done some online marketing or even traditional marketing, you will know about lead magnets. A lead magnet is where you offer something for free (an ebook, a pdf, or a webinar), and after your class or your book, you can give a great call to action at the end, explaining what you do. I like to use lead magnets myself, (and I am working on a few right now as we speak), but you might be asking yourself what is a good lead magnet? How can I create one? Or why do I need one?

If you are familiar with AMAs and nosleep, then you might know a thing or two about Reddit. Since it's debut in 2005, Reddit has grown to be one of the most frequented sites on the web and it also gained a reputation for being one of the snarkiest. With the amount of digital foot traffic that this site has received over the years, Reddit has become one of the top go to's for virality, and to build any business owner's credibility. The question of the hour is why has Reddit become the new Twitter? The answer lies in the numbers.