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.

I don't know about you but I am a HUGE Black Mirror fan. I might have to do a complete re-watch of the entire series soon. For those of you who watched the latest season, you would know about the episode titled Smithereens. Which is an episode about a rideshare driver named Chris who kidnaps an intern (who he first assumes is a company executive) from the Smithereen office and demands to talk to the CEO of Smithereen. Which is more or less like Twitter in our reality. Chris uses the intern as leverage and takes him for hostage threatening to kill the man if he doesn't speak to the CEO.

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.

Video is taking over all internet content! I've stressed this in many of my previous posts before that videos on social media are extremely important for your social media strategy. Videos now account for 80% of all consumer internet traffic. Also, more important (and relevant) mobile video consumption increases by 100% every single year. If your social media strategy doesn't involve videos in some form or another, then you, my friend, are doing yourself and your business a grave injustice. Let's say that you do have a video strategy going already for your social media presence. Here's how you can do better.

The journey into mindset is a tough one and a lifelong journey. However, I do believe in the power of manifestation. Do you believe that you can manifest the life you want? I do! Most people don't want to put in the work of saying the affirmations and believing they could be wealthy or have that dream client or partner they wish, which is why they give up. The key is not to! I am learning the power of manifestation and the law of attraction right now, and it's super helpful to know what exactly you want so you can tell the universe to bring it to you! What do you need in your life? More money? Love? Friends? More business? Well, if you are like me and said "all the above!" then you will need to take the manifestation journey I am taking!

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?

Changing your mindset is a long and evolving process that most entrepreneurs (including myself) are still learning how to do. There are just certain things that you can't predict in life, and this past couple of weeks have been very difficult for me. I got laid off from my job and a couple of things fell through for me that I didn't really expect to fall through. However, I've been very proud of myself for remaining optimistic about my outlook on life. I know that a year ago, that wouldn't have been the case. I would've been up all night listening to emo music and hating the world.

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.

Some of you may or may not know that I actually had a full-time job (complete with benefits and a 401k) along with having my own freelancing business. Well, sad to say I just got laid off from my full-time job. I would like to say "wow totally didn't see that coming!" however, I did. Most of you are business owners, but I am sure you all had jobs at some point, where it feels like it wasn't what you signed up for. That is how I felt towards the end. As an entrepreneur, I am like this is like the best thing that could've happened to me and that I should count my blessings. However, as someone with bills to pay, I am like "there goes that security blanket!".

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.

For many businesses, marketing is one of the most grueling and time-consuming tasks to take on. This is why most business owners like to outsource it out. You might have a website, a blog, an email list and ads on Google, but you are still not getting in front of the audience you need. Maybe you don't even have any of this stuff, and just want to get started on social media. Either way, I get a lot of people who are curious about social media management saying that "I am not sure if I really need it?" or "what's the point?, I can do all of this myself?". I can answer all of these common questions and more, in this week's post!

There are a lot of people will tell you about starting your own business, but the one thing I believe that no one tells you is how much of a mental strain it can be. It really does take a lot out of you, mentally and physically, but you are always told that it'll be worth it in the end. Well, how can that be when you never see the results right? It's such a struggle to see the end goal when you are in the day to day, but we are all told that you will retire sooner, pay off loans faster and be happier than at your mundane 9-5. That is partially true, but what no one ever tells us, is this deep fear that you have within yourself that you will never be good as your competitor won't ever go away. No one ever tells you how much in the hole you will be before you actually start seeing any ROI and no one ever tells you how lonely you will feel amongst other people, even entrepreneurs.

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.

"Google it when you get home!" is what you used to hear people say back in the day when we had DSL connections (or how about that dial-up connection?). How often do you search for things with your phone every day? Probably a lot right? Let's ask a more elucidate question. How often do you use your voice to search for things? Whether you use Siri, Alexa or Cortana to find out what the weather is or who was in that movie that you watched when you were 13, voice search is becoming more of a staple in our smartphone culture.

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!

I normally talk about industry related stuff, and if that is what you're looking for just please go to my blog and see the 70+ other posts I have about social media updates. I want to switch gears here and talk about something that I really don't see many other business owners talking about and that's mental health. A lot of people, especially Americans, don't realize how your mental health can affect everything you do, including your business. For this week's post, I want to talk about my own experience with mental health and how it directly correlated with my business and my day job.