I don’t know about you, but there are probably a million times in my life that I’ve started out on a path, only to abandon it a few days, weeks, or months in.

There are other things I’ve stuck with; like blogging, writing books, creating content. But yeah. There are probably way more things I meant to get done than I actually completed.

We run out of steam. We run out of inspiration. We get bored with the routine. And so maybe we skip a day, we call it a cheat day, say we’ll get back on our diet tomorrow. But then it’s been three weeks of cheeseburgers and…. yeah. Not so much.

I don’t know how you deal with this situation. I can tell you how I deal with it in two words: shame spiral.

I berate myself; what is wrong with me? Why can’t I stick to the routine? Why do I lose my motivation?

It was for all of these reasons that I recently purchased James Clear’s Atomic Habits. It had been recommended to me by my friend Mike Vardy who said it helped him (listen to Mike’s interview with James here). I was sold, and ordered right away.

I just finished reading it, and it has been an immense help to me to learn more about myself and how we form habits.

Clear’s book focuses on how to set yourself up for success. Good habits, in order for us to form them and continue to do them, have to be:

• Obvious
• Attractive
• Easy
• Satisfying

I think for a lot of us, but for me especially, part of the reason we don’t stick with something is because we get discouraged so quickly. Like, we want to write a book, for example, or lose 20 lbs. When we’ve been working at it diligently for say a week or two, but we don’t really feel like we’ve made a lot of progress, we stop because we get discouraged. We want to reach our goals, but we want to reach them like NOW.

I’m immensely impatient. I’ll admit it. Part of what Clear advocates in Atomic Habits is not setting huge goals for yourself. Rather, he advocates setting small goals for yourself. You see, if you can set and reach small goals, you string a bunch of those together and you have a big goal.

Like, if you want to write a book, write one page every day. In a year, you’ll have written 365 pages. Writing one page doesn’t seem like that much. And if it does, make it less. Make it a paragraph. The point here is that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s going to take some time. But each incremental win builds on the last until, after time, you’ve made some real progress.

Don’t forget that what makes a habit is that you eventually get into a mindset where you feel like you need to do that thing. At the beginning, it’s hard. You don’t want to do it. But after a while, it becomes natural, or even needed. That’s the place you want to try to get to. The place where you feel like something is missing if you don’t do your daily pages or your walk or your Duolingo.

For me, one thing that really helps my motivation is having someone or something to be accountable to outside of myself. I can make myself loads of promises, and I won’t keep them. But if I make a commitment to someone else, you’d better believe I’m gonna keep it. So get yourself a writing buddy, or a workout buddy, or someone to practice French with.

I bought myself an Apple Watch for my birthday on August 14, and every single day since I’ve had it, I’ve closed my rings. I don’t know if I’ll keep doing this forever, but I have been singleminded in doing it every day. I have my “tiny apple overlord” bossing me around. And yes, there are days when I resent it, and yes, there are days when I didn’t want to go, and I had to drag my sad butt out the door. But I’d tell myself, “just 10 minutes. Walk for 10 minutes,” and inevitably once I got out there, I’d do 30.

Another thing that makes us abandon our goals is boredom. I feel this a lot. I mapped out a couple of routes around Stanley Park, and I’d try to take a different one every day so I didn’t get too bored with my walk. I listened to different Spotify playlists or podcasts. Clear says “really successful people feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else. The difference is, they still find a way to show up despite feelings of boredom.” Realistically, you just gotta push through. Just. Keep. Going.

http://gph.is/1URfpeU

I’m 37 days in.

Will I keep going? I don’t know.

But according to Clear, here’s the key to when you fall off the wagon: get back on as soon as possible. Don’t spend a lot of time beating yourself up about it. Just take it, move on, get going again.

So this has been really useful to me in terms of working on my fitness. Now that I have this system, I can see myself applying it to other things: like redesigning my website, or saving for a trip (ha! when we can take trips again).

So for me, finding motivation has worked by:

• Having a “why” for my goal. In my case, I want to be healthy as I head into middle age and not be gasping for breath every time I climb a hill. Oh, and my pants. I want to fit into my pants.
• Not focusing on the end goal, just focusing on very small “snackable” daily tasks
• Having someone or something outside of myself to be accountable to
• Getting back on the horse as soon as possible after I fall off

Have you read Atomic Habits (PS his newsletter is free and awesome)? How do you stay motivated? Comment below and let me know.

The post On Finding Motivation appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.

I mean, first it was those terrible fires in Australia. Then we nearly had WWIII. Then there was that global pandemic, and finally, sweeping (hopefully) social change. And what about the murder hornets? And it’s only June!! To say that 2020 will go down in the history books as a year of notoriety is an understatement.

It’s enough to make you want to crawl into bed and stay there, curled up in a ball under the covers.

via GIPHY

All these world events, but especially the Coronavirus, have dramatically changed how we live our lives. Most of us, if we still managed to keep our jobs (I have, thank Dog), are working or schooling from home. If your job was affected by the pandemic, you’re probably freaking out over money, although here in Canada, steps have been taken to ensure no one goes broke. Our way of life is totally different now than it was a few months ago. We can’t go to restaurants, socialize, meet friends. Those are all things of the past for the foreseeable future, unless those people are “in your bubble.”

With the majority of people working from home right now, as well as trying to homeschool at the same time, unable to get to the gym, and anxiety levels at an all-time high, I thought it might be a good time to write a post about digital self-care in these (oh how I am sick of this phrase) unprecedented times.

I interviewed Angela Crocker, author of Digital Life Skills for Youth (2019), Digital Legacy Plan, (co-written with Vicki McLeod, 2019), Declutter Your Data (2018), and The Content Planner (2017), and Vicki McLeod, author of Effective Communication at Work (2020), You and the Internet of Things (2020), and Untrending (2016), about some things we should all be doing right now in terms of our digital self care.

Boundaries: we all know that the basis of good self-care begins with boundaries. The problem is, when your home is also your office, those boundaries tend to blur. So, of course if you can have a dedicated space for your “office,” that’s the best option, but even if your office is your dining room table, you can still create digital boundaries.

Because we are working globally right now, time of day has become relatively meaningless. Turn off your audible notifications, except for the most important ones, and monitor your screen time, advises Vicki. Realistically speaking, it’s difficult to focus and get tasks done if you’re constantly being interrupted by your phone. Or it’s difficult to relax if your work is constantly infringing on your personal time. Take advantage of features on your phone like Do Not Disturb mode. This keeps your phone silent, but allows for important calls to come through (like your kids for example).

Another option says Angela, is to have dedicated devices for specific tasks. So computer is for work, but the tablet can be for fun and entertainment.

Monitor Response Time: It’s tempting to respond to messages and emails immediately all the time, as everyone seems to be online all the time, Angela adds. But it’s okay to not respond to things right away. Again, distraction is your enemy here. Create an autoresponder on your email that says you check email twice a day and will respond at that time to manage sender’s expectations.

via GIPHY

Gloom and Doom: at the beginning of the pandemic, in March and April, I was watching the news 2 or three times a day. I’d watch it in the morning when I got up, at noon and then again at 5 pm. That need for information came from a place of anxiety. I wanted to know what was going on all the time so that I could be informed, and prepare if need be. But there is also such a thing as information overload. Watching the news, monitoring twitter, monitoring news sources, seeing what people are posting on Facebook… they all can just get to be too much. Vicki suggests choosing 2 or 3 trustworthy sources of news and monitoring them exclusively, and then only once or twice a day. It’s important to be informed, but you don’t need to send yourself into a whirlwind, either.

Pressure to Post: During #BlackOutTuesday, i was feeling a lot of pressure to post my support of the Black Lives Matter campaign. Online sources were saying that silence meant complicity and I didn’t want people to think I was racist. But by the same token, I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, I didn’t want to post something and then cause damage because the thing I said wasn’t phrased right or communicated the wrong sentiment. It was a very uncomfortable place to be in.

One thing to be aware of is that much of social media is what is defined as  performative, says Vicki. If you think about what we post online, it’s often a version of us we want people to believe is us, rather than the real us. Real online vulnerability is rare. So there is a lot of pressure to perform in a way society (or our echo chamber) wants us to. In the case of #BLM, this was a good thing, I think, but overall, especially if you are a business, I think it’s a good idea to take a step back and think before you post. There were many, many examples of companies that posted support for Black Lives Matter, but then were called out for hypocrisy. They felt the pressure, and they toed the line, but it ultimately caused way more damage.

Pivot Your Content: if you are a business, how do you adapt your brand to a global crisis? The number one rule is this: you must never seem to be profiting from other people’s suffering. Remember those guys that bought up all the hand sanitizer and were selling it at a huge profit? Nobody liked those guys.

Think about how you can help your audience, rather. Can you pivot the kind of content you are posting online to help your audience, while still remaining true to your brand?

via GIPHY

The Zoom Fatigue is so real: I mean, thank goodness for video conferencing software. It has kept us connected to family, friends and work during a time when it’s not safe for us to meet face to face. But holy crap, 6 video conferences in one day will take all the wind out of your sails! Try to keep your zoom calls to the absolute minimum, see if you can solve problems via phone calls or emails if possible.

Get out of the house: one thing that’s helped maintain my sanity over the last few months is getting out for a daily walk if possible (I live in rainy Vancouver, so it wasn’t always), and in nature, again, if possible. Physical activity and air and sunshine and trees are so important for your brain and your mood.

Finally, the most important self-care tip of all is to be gentle with yourself. have compassion for yourself, and be aware of what’s going on for others as well. For me, my first semester teaching entirely online is over, but it was really stressful dealing with technology and trying to figure out how to teach classes I normally teach F2F through a video/online format. I kept having to remind myself I was doing the best I could. And you have to keep reminding yourself that, too.

Realistically, the world changed in a massive way a few months ago, and it’s okay to feel that, to take the time to grieve it. Our old lives are gone. And I get that, to some degree, of course we need to move on, take care of business, address the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid. But as time goes on, I’m seeing more and more opportunities for change. The self-reflection or introspection that’s been happening during these times and our ability to be resilient and face the future has definitely been the sliver lining to this really difficult time.

The post Digital Self Care in 2020 appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.

In the US right now, the 18-24 year demographic accounts for 42% of its users.  A further 27% make up the next biggest demographic, 13-17 year olds. 

Clearly, a Gen Xer like me has no business on the platform. 

Or do I??!? 

TIkTok came roaring out of the starting gate last year, being the only one of the top 5 most downloaded apps of the year not owned by Facebook (the other four were FB, Insta, Whats App and FB messenger). TikTok, in 2020, has 800Million active monthly users worldwide, making it the 6th most popular social network in the world. (source: Hootsuite)

I joined TikTok a few years back when my teen was experimenting with it. I wanted to see what all the rumpus was about. I ended up deleting the app not long after. I just didn’t get it. Fast forward to late last year. I had been hearing so much buzz about it, and I felt an obligation to my students to be as well informed as I could be, so I could talk to them about it. 

This time, I was hooked. When you open the app, it starts playing automatically, and it pulls you in. You then just swipe up to get to the next one. 

There are a lot of things I like about TikTok: 

1. The algorithm isn’t BS. The algorithm actually seems to be pretty smart and knows what it’s doing. It is pretty effective at finding me content I’m going to like. Sometimes I have to tell it not to show me videos like the one that comes up, but for the most part, it shows me things I like. The algorithm is based on geography, so it also shows me some local content, as well. 
2. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s a lot of people having fun on TikTok. It’s not all unapproachable perfect selfies taken on mountaintops. It’s moms and people just dealing with life in a tongue-in-cheek kinda way. It’s okay to not be perfect, in fact, it’s encouraged here. 
3. There are serious conversations about mental health. You’ll see a ton of content here about addiction, being gay, being Trans, having depression and anxiety… and it’s all okay. It’s all good. It’s a safe space. 
4. The tool is pretty effing awesome. The tool to create the actual video is pretty great. It gives you loads of options, tons of filters, the ability to cut, splice together, do special effects, sync video with music. The other thing I love about it is how easy it is to share your videos on literally any other social network. 
5. The ability to go viral still is real here. Okay, so. Um. I went viral on TikTok. 

@findbex

Why TikTok is better than Instagram.I all you magnificent weirdos!! ##instagram ##tiktok ##socialmedia ##AfterMyCoffee ##showerthoughts ##fyp ##foryoupage

♬ original sound – findbex

Let’s just compare this to Instagram for a sec, shall we? I get less and less love on Instagram all the time, and it becomes a vicious cycle. I used to love Instagram because people saw my content. My friends interacted with my content. But hardly at all any more outside of stories. My feed posts languish, unloved. This is mainly in part to Instagram’s algorithm, which makes me feel like I’m being strangled. Also, I’ve been complaining for years that I dislike the perfection and the high standards I feel like you need to uphold to get anywhere on Instagram. I’m just not into posting sexy selfies all the time. Sorry, it’s not me. 

TikTok is the island of misfit toys, and I’m one of them. 

I’m still really really learning about the platform and how it works, but I do have a bit of advice for you. TikTok really runs on memes–thousands of people doing the same dances, the same lipsyncs. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s super fun. But try to add your own spin to it. Try to do something a bit different, add your personality and flair. That’s the thing that people are going to be interested in. 

Think you’re too old for TikTok? I beg to differ. 

Want to do more reading? 

Everything Brands Need to Know about TikTok in 2020

Brian Fanzo: How TikTok Will Make us Better Marketers

The post Tiptoeing into TikTok appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.

My kid is 16 (I don’t know how that happened), and we are now having a lot of conversations about what he wants to do when he graduates from high school in a year. I mean, YIKES! 

With this comes a lot of other concerns about his life skills, ability to be independent, and his social life. It feels like a lot of responsibility, both for him and for me. 

I realize I’m not the first person to go through this, and I most certainly won’t be the last. But as a parent in today’s world, we are dealing with new things that no generation has had to deal with before, and that is technology. 

Kids in today’s world are growing up on devices. They have phones, computers, tablets… and not just for school. Their phones keep them connected to family and friends, both real and virtual. And yes, virtual friends is now a thing! 

In some ways, I feel like kids in today’s world have more pressure than ever on them. It’s somewhat expected that they will have social media accounts and post on them. I think the pressure is maybe worse for girls than it is for boys, but I’m sure there’s a lot of pressure on boys as well. But add to that the fact that what they post can have a detrimental effect on their life goals if they post the wrong thing, and it starts to get complex real quick. 

I recently read with horror an article about how “Intstagram Perfect Face” is leading to a spike in plastic surgery amongst young women, and then later that same week, Instagram released a tool for teenagers around best practices and safety. 

Angela Crocker is a mom and the author of Digital Life Skills for Youth, which was released late last year by Self Counsel Press. The book is written as a guide for parents, teachers and youth workers, with the goal to help us to navigate this tricky stretch in our kid’s lives.

When Michael was younger, I read a lot about screen time. I always questioned if the articles I was reading were real, or generational bias. The reality of raising kids in today’s world is that having digital skills is going to help them to be successful. We had to learn typing in high school (a particular form of torture for me, though I can type like nobody’s business now). Kids don’t need to learn typing in today’s world, because typing comes more naturally to them then cursive writing (which now most schools don’t teach because why?). 

What kids need to learn in today’s world, Crocker posits, is to become good digital citizens. That means teaching them how to be online safely, and to learn good study skills and also how to be good people online. We read so much these days about cyberbullying–and here in BC we have some very real examples of kids that were literally cyberbullied to death. It’s a sobering thought, and one that, I’m imagining, most parents don’t want to even think about. 

As parents, we have a difficult job. We need to raise our kids to be independent, which means giving them the space to make their own mistakes. And that’s fine. But in today’s world, a mistake online can cost someone their career, or worse. 

One of the things I found most useful about this book was a master list of digital life skills that Crocker has compiled. It has the more obvious things on it, like safety, study skills, screen time and making sure that your kids are getting exercise and eating properly (I don’t want my kid to grow up to be one of those guys that spends his days playing video games and eating pizza all day), but also maybe things you hadn’t really thought about, like phone etiquette, teaching them how to spot fake news, or (god forbid) sexting. 

Teaching our kids to be good digital citizens includes:

Citing sources: one thing I struggle with a lot as a teacher, is I have students showing up in my class that don’t understand that copy/pasting from wikipedia is plagiarism. I know I’m not alone; this is a big issue in many schools today. The internet is the best research tool ever invented, but we have to teach our kids how to use it correctly. 

Managing your digital footprint: posting the wrong thing online can have a deep impact on your life down the road. It’s important kids understand that things on the internet live forever, even if you delete them. You don’t want to post anything that might have an effect on your future goals.  

Modelling behaviour: one of the most important things we can do for our kids is model good digital behaviour. That means putting our phones away during dinner, not texting while driving, being kind to others online. You might think your kids are more deeply affected by the influencers they are following, but you as a parent are the OG influencer. 

Fake news and bias: one thing Michael and I talk a lot about (the joys of having a marketing professor for a mom!) is how marketing is created to make us want to buy things. We talk about how sex sells and many products are marketed that way, but it doesn’t make it true or right. It’s important to teach your kids about bias and to check their sources before they believe what they read online. 

At the end of the day, my child will most definitely choose technology as his career. We’re not exactly sure what that looks like yet, but his digital skills are how he’s eventually going to make a living. And that’s invaluable. 

If you have a teen or a pre-teen, I heartily encourage you to get this book and to read it thoroughly. It will help you to have the kinds of conversations we should all be having with our kids. Not in a scary way, but in a mindful, thoughtful way, to help us all create the next generation of good, happy, successful digital citizens. 

Interested in learning more? Buy Digital Life Skills for Youth, or take a workshop Digital Life Skills for Youth or take a workshop with Angela here (Jan 28) or here (Feb, April & May). 

The post Book Review: Digital Life Skills for Youth appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.

First, it was all about the follow/unfollow. Basically, you would follow a ton of people every day, and then unfollow them a few days later. The idea is, when you follow someone, they get a notification, and come over and check out your profile, and possibly follow you back. But then you unfollow them, to keep your follower/followee ratio high. 

Then came the bots. Bots allow you to automatically do the follow/unfollow thing, but also allow you to like and comment on people’s posts. Engaging with people’s content, we all know, is a great way to get followers. Bots can do it faster and without needing your attention. 

Do these methods work? Sure. What’s the problem, then? 

First of all, they aren’t authentic. You aren’t authentically engaging with your audience. And I can spot a bot-generated comment a mile away (FYI I do occasionally use a service called Combin to comment on Instagram, but I cherry-pick the images I want to comment on, and I write specific comments for those photos). Additionally, Instagram is not happy if you use them. You’re essentially cheating the system, so I get why, but you have to be very careful about using third party software when interacting with Instagram. They don’t like it, and if they catch you, then can ban your account or even shut you down entirely. 

So, yes, these methods work, but I’ve never been a fan of them. 

Well, there’s a new method in town, and it’s called Mass Looking. 

I discovered this a few weeks back when I posted a question sticker on my Instagram story. I got about 2 actual answers, and all the rest felt like bots. I wondered what was up and tried to do research to find out, but couldn’t find anything. I finally figured it out. 

There are programs that use bots to look at Instagram Stories from your account. Basically, you sign up for an account, pay the money, and hand over your login info. You tell the bot what kinds of content you’re interested in looking at, give it some keywords/hashtags, or tell it what account(s) you’d like to scrape followers from. Then, it watches millions of Instagram Stories per day on your behalf. The platforms say they can view up to 10 Million IG Stories per day, but most are only reporting around 3 Million, max. Still, that’s a lot of Instagram Stories. 

The concept is this: when you do an instagram story, you often, after the fact, check the analytics on that story to see how many people watched it, and you may even swipe up on the story to see exactly who watched your story. If you see someone you don’t know who watched your story, you may wander over to their profile to check them out, and maybe even follow them (this works especially well if the person doesn’t have a ton of followers). 

In addition, these bots allow you to answer question stickers and participate in slider polls. 

Which answers my question about all the random answers I got to my question sticker. 

There are quite a few of these kinds of tools/platforms out there, including: this, this, this, this and this (and there’s more). 

One thing I noticed while researching this article is that many of these sites are written in very bad English, and that many of these platforms are based in Russia. I don’t know about you, but for me, I’m loathe to hand over my IG credentials to someone in Russia??? 

Obviously, this is a growth hack, but be careful; Instagram does not endorse these methods, and they do not like them, and they are constantly changing the platform to catch people who are using these methods. And think about it: if you go one day from watching, say, 100 Instagram Stories, to watching a million the next, that’s going to cause a red flag on your account.

I would love to hear from you if you’ve tried one of these tools, and what your experience with it has been. Please comment below, or if you want to remain anonymous, email me. 

The post Instagram Mass Looking appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.

It seems like growth and engagement are both slow and hard to come by. 

I’ve tried a lot of different methods in the name of “science,” including Instagram engagement pods and also Instagram Engagement tools (or bots). 

You have to be careful when using one of these third party services because Instagram frowns on them. Additionally, they can make you look like a spammer, and that’s never something you want to be known as. 

A few months ago, I stumbled across this Instagram Engagement tool called Combin. Now, let me just say upfront, this post is in no way sponsored by them, I just started using it, and I like it. 

First of all, Combin allows you to like and comment on content you would genuinely already like and comment on. Many of the other engagement tools out there just require you to supply them with a hashtag and a comment, and then they put those on all the posts with that hashtag. The problem is, your comments could be viewed as inappropriate, or people sometimes stuff popular hashtags into their posts (that have nothing to do with that post) just to try to get traffic. So you end up commenting on stuff you really wouldn’t have IRL. 

Combin allows you to pre-screen Instagram posts before commenting on them. 

We all know that engagement with others is vital to getting engagement and followers on your account. Instagram is very karmic. If you comment on someone’s post, they’ll often come have a look at your account, like and comment on your content, and maybe even follow you, if they like your content enough. 

But doing this every day, searching hashtags and liking and commenting takes time. Combin does a lot of this work for you. 

I use it every day to search for 3-4 hashtags. I then cherry-pick my favourite images and like and comment on them. I can even customize what I want my comments to be! 

It’s pretty cool. You can download it here. I’m currently just using the free version, but I’d be interested to hear from any of you who are using the paid version. 

Here’s a video that shows you how I use it every day for Instagram engagement and growth. 

The post Using Combin for Instagram Engagement and Growth appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.

You see, they’re a local Vancouver startup, and I like supporting local biz. They have been very generous to my students, and I liked the platform. 

But over the past couple of years, my loyalties have shifted. 

A couple years ago, I started playing with Agorapulse, a new social media dashboard, created by Emeric Ernoult out of Paris. At the same time, Hootsuite started to remove some of my favourite features of the platform, so these days, I’m pretty much all in in on Agorapulse. 

I use it for a variety of different things, but primarily for creating and scheduling content for my own feeds and for my clients. 

When you’re creating content for a social feed, there are, essentially, three kinds of content you want to use: 

• Original, or created content
• Curated content that comes from other sources but is related to your brand, and
• Influencer content

Now, the challenge with influencer content is that it can be sparse, unless you’re a huge brand like Hershel or Nike or Target. So that kind of content will likely not come up often. 

And created content? It’s great–but it’s also an immense amount of work to bang out original blog posts/podcasts/YouTubes/Instagram photos every single day. 

So for most of us doing this work, probably about 10-20% of our content is created, about 10% or so is influencer or what’s called UGC (User Generated Content), and then that leaves 70% that we have to fill. 

Curation is the key. You subscribe to great feeds that are related to your brand, and then share their content. So, for example, for this blog, I often read The Social Media Examiner. I keep an eye on everything Mari Smith does. I subscribe to the Later blog to keep up to date on the latest with Instagram. And that’s the kind of content that I sort through and then cherry-pick the best content to share with you on my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Agorapulse helps me do this in just a few minutes a day. I basically spend an hour or two once a week creating content for all my feeds. A few minutes, once a week, is all you need to have a lively Twitter feed. 

Here’s how to create and schedule a week’s worth of tweets in just a few minutes: 

By the way, I also create spreadsheets of tweets that are my created content (ie my own blog posts and youtube videos) and bulk upload that to Agorapulse once a month or so. Here’s how to do that. 

So by doing these two simple methods, the bulk tweet upload and curating tweets, you can ensure you always have content on your feed, and you are serving both your audience and yourself. 

The post Using Agorapulse to Create and Schedule a Week’s Worth of Tweets in Just a Few Minutes! appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.

These guys are probably best known for Podcast Movement, an annual podcasting conference that has picked up quite a bit of steam in the last few years. 

The reason it caught my eye, is because Influencer Marketing is something I talk about a lot in my classes; it’s something I practice in my business, and I see it being a big part of many marketing campaigns these days–and yet–these guys are advising against it? 

What’s the deal with that? 

Constable and Easeley point out, and rightly so, that influencer marketing is incredibly competitive these days. In addition, it can get pretty expensive, especially if you are chasing after big influencers. This book was published in 2015, and a few things have changed since then, so I would add to that list that influcencers have been losing credibility in recent years because of incidents like the Fyre festival. 

So. Instead of chasing after influencers, Constable and Easeley suggest you become an influencer yourself. 

The reality is, you don’t need hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands of followers to be successful as an influencer. In fact, they don’t even really focus heavily on vanity metrics (which is the number of followers you have on your social channels). 

Of course you want to grow your social following as much as you can. But Constable and Easeley suggest focusing your efforts on growing your email list. The question is, is email marketing still relevant in 2019? And the answer, I think, is yes. Your email list is what’s known as owned media, whereas your social accounts are considered to be borrowed. If, for some reason, your account gets deleted, your entire income could vanish over night. It happens. It happened to this gal last week. 

So, your email list; your list of blog subscribers, these are still powerful marketing tools in today’s world. Think about ways to grow your email list: can you give something away in exchange for emails? A white paper? A discount? An e-book? A small course? Think about that and focus your efforts on growing that list. 

Here’s where the really interesting part of the book kicks in for me. 

Instead of focusing so much on growing your social media following, Constable and Easeley suggest you position yourself as an expert in your field by doing the following: 

• Pitch yourself to local media and get them to write stories about you
• Pitch yourself to local TV stations and get them to have you on as an interview guest
• Get yourself booked as a guest on popular podcasts
• Write guest posts for big online publication

I love this idea! I think that the traditional media still has power, and many social influencers don’t think about this as an option. 

My friend Sacha D has been using this method to grow her influence. She has written for The Huffington Post, and she regularly books segments on morning news shows.  

The key, here is to create a niche for yourself. You can’t be doing the same thing as everyone else (which again, is something that I see a lot of influencers doing). Be unique and interesting, not like everyone else. 

Once you’ve carved out a niche for yourself, and you are getting known as the thought leader, or the expert in that niche, the next step is to think about monetizing. 

You have a bunch of options, and all of these options lead to even more influence: 

• Self-publishing a book or an e-book
• Becoming a coach
• Creating a conference
• Paid speaking gigs
• Paid consulting gigs

These steps further build your credibility as an influencer or a thought leader. 

I found this book really inspiring. I found myself taking notes, bending pages. I think what I appreciated the most about this book was how practical and tactical the advice was. There were many great suggestions, all of which felt actionable. 

I will definitely be putting some of the advice from Stop Chasing Influencers into practice in my work, and I would like to recommend you get the book and do the same. 

The post Book Review: Stop Chasing Influencers appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.

I know this isn’t true for everyone. Instagram relies on the visual, so if you have a business that isn’t very visual, then maybe you don’t need to be there. Or maybe you need to figure out a way to make it work for you? 

Instagram currently, in 2019, has 1 Billion active monthly users, and 500 million active monthly Instagram Stories users. Those numbers make it difficult to ignore. 

But as the platform has been growing, so also has its complexity. There are many factors to consider when managing your Instagram. 

Personal or business? This blog is about business, so I’m assuming you’re here to learn more about that. You don’t have to make your account a business account, but it does offer some advantages, like making it easier to contact you, having the ability to buy ads, and also access to analytics. 

Profile: you are limited to 150 characters here, so keep it short and sweet. Your username is limited to 30, and in an ideal world, you want for your username to be the same as all your other usernames on social networks. For example, if you look for me, I’m @rebeccacoleman on almost everything. @WholeFoods in another great example. Make sure you mix up your bio with both personal and professional information, to make you seem like a rounded human being, and not a robot. And for the love of Pete, #don’t #use #too #many #hashtags. Here’s a great article, including a worksheet, on how to write a good Instagram bio. 

Website Link: The other thing you need to remember about your Instagram bio is that you only have one clickable link in your entire profile. You can try putting links in the descriptions of your photos, but they won’t be clickable, and that renders them basically useless. What I do is use a tool called Link.tree. I am able to put multiple links on LInk.tree, and then the link in my bio leads people there. 

Content: goes without saying that Instagram is a photographer’s medium, so the better your photography, the better your content will perform. That means investing in a new phone, maybe, or a camera, so that you have good equipment to start with. Learn more about lighting (lighting is key!), and read up on the rule of thirds. Maybe even take some classes! 

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Editorial Calendar: have a look at the calendar for the month and then begin to sketch out ideas for the month. Are there holidays coming up that you can create content around? For example, right now it’s spring, and I’m posting tons of photos of flowers, blooms, cherry blossoms… as a food blogger, I can also think about what kinds of foods are in season right now, and create content around those. It’s great to have a plan, rather than just flying by the seat of your pants. I find when I do that, I publish less content than when I plan things out. 

How often to post? I have no idea. It really depends on how much content you have. I try to post a minimum of 5/7 days of the week. But I often find that my posts perform better if I skip a day. Play around with this and see what works for you. 

Content ideas: one big mistake that many companies make is they only talk about themselves all the time and don’t try to help their followers. Of course you are there to do business, and you want to show it off. But is there some way you can help people? For example, instead of just showing a jean jacket that you’re trying to sell, show three different ways to style it in a carousel. Give value back to your followers with giveaways, contests, and tips. 

• DIYs, tips, how-tos: think Infographics that detail how to do something
• Inspiration: hugely popular right now on Instagram. Find a quote or an inspirational saying and post it
• Influencers/ celebs using your product or service: this gives you social proof. One company that does a great job of this is local jewellery manufacturer, Pyrrha.
• Behind-the-scenes, or photos of your employees, giving a face to your business
• Promoting causes: if your business is involved with any charities or non-profits, or you are fundraising for a cause, be sure to post about that
• UGC (User Generated Content): what many businesses do is encourage their clients to post on a particular hashtag, and they they choose photos to profile on their account. One of my favorites in this genre is Hello BC. 
• Ask Questions to promote engagement. You’ll see Instagrammers showing two options in the photo, then asking folks to vote for their favorite in the comments, or posting a photo and then asking followers to tag someone who might enjoy it. 
• Contests: everyone loves free stuff! Contests are a great way to get engagement
• TBTs/#ThrowBackThursday
• Funny stuff/ memes: show that you have a sense of humour. 
• Timely posts: holidays, “national taco day”, etc
• Faces: photos of people will always perform better 

Instagram’s Algorithm. Instagram is owned by Facebook, and both are ruled by an algorithm. So what you see or don’t see in your feed is determined by Facebook. It’s important to know/understand this, because if you know about it, you can work with it/within it. Simply put, the more engagement your post gets (especially shortly after you post it), the better it is. Engagement is counted as a like or a comment, primarily. So you want to make your content as engaging as you possibly can. Other factors come into play here, like posting at the right time of the day, hashtags, what kind of content, etc. Here’s a good article to learn more.  

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What time to post? If you have a business account, Instagram gives you access to this info. If you don’t, simply post at different times of the day and see where you get the most engagement. For me, it’s later at night, usually between 8-10pm, but I know a lot of people that post first thing in the morning. 

Hashtags. You cannot be serious about IG unless you have a hashtag strategy. Instagram allows you to include up to 30, but for many people, that’s excessive. Start by looking at successful instagrammers in your niche, both ones that live near you, and internationally. What hashtags do they use? You can start an excel spreadsheet if you like, tracking the hashtag, and how many mentions it gets. When you start to type a hashtag into Instagram, it will tell you how many times that hashtag has been used. One strategy I like is the 10/10/10 strategy. Use 1/3 very popular hashtags (1 million or more), 1/3 medium popular hashtags (say 100,000+) and 1/3 specific or niche hashtags. The reason for this, is that, even though those hashtags are popular, they also have a lot of competition, so including less popular, but less competitive hashtags in your strategy can help. Once you have your hashtags, store them in a note on your phone so you can copy/paste them. I always make sure I use slightly different hashtags on every post, and mix them up to avoid shadowbanning. By the way, there’s no data to support putting them in the first comment is better than putting them in your description. It’s purely for aesthetics. 

Engagement. It’s important to engage with others on Instagram. It’s a very karmic network, if you engage with others, they will engage with you. I try to set aside about 15 minutes a day (sometimes longer) to engage with my followers and hashtags. Basically, what I do is, I put one of my favourite hashtags (ie one I’d use) into the search bar on Instagram, and then I go through and engage with a few of those posts, liking and leaving comments. I do this for a few hashtags every day, and I mix them up. Gary Vee calls this the $1.80 method. I probably do not do 90 comments a day, but I make sure to do at least 25 or more. 

Instagram Stories: because of the algorithm, it’s important to do Instagram Stories regularly. They aren’t subject to the algorithm in the same way, and I often find that I am reaching a wider audience in my Instagram stories than I am in my regular posts! The great thing about IG stories, is they don’t have to be perfect. They just expire in 24 hours, anyway! Be yourself, have fun, don’t worry about perfection. Connect with your audience. 

Managing your Instagram: here are a few of my favourite tools. 

The post How to Manage Instagram appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.

This was the first time I had any experience with what we are now calling a digital legacy. It’s basically what is left of your online life when you die. And in the same way that you would write a will before you die, you should be thinking about how you want to instruct your loved ones on what to do with your online presence after you are no longer “online.” 

My dear friends Vicki McLeod and Angela Crocker have written a book about this emerging topic called Digital Legacy Plan: A Guide to the Personal and Practical Elements of Your Digital Life before  you Die.

I have a pretty large online presence; I have authored multiple blogs, I have been on Facebook and Twitter for 10 years, and I have 8 years worth of photos on Instagram. That’s a lot of stuff! What I love about these things is that they are creating a kind of digital scrapbook of my life, which I love looking back on (and sometimes not!). 

But there are thousands and thousands of photos, updates, blog posts… what happens to all that content when I am no longer here? 

This is something I haven’t thought a lot about, and I’m sure you haven’t either. Which is why I think this book is so important for everyone. 

Vicki and Angela start the book out by taking a look at how we, as a culture, view death and dying. Let’s be real, it’s not exactly a topic that people like to talk about. It’s depressing! I certainly don’t want to think about my untimely demise, or about leaving behind my son. These topics are sad, they’re tender… and so we tend to push them aside. 

I had to deal with this a few years ago when I wrote my will. Okay, so just to be clear, I’m a 40-something in good health. I’m not dying (any more so than anyone else on this earth), but I am a single parent, and I didn’t want there to be any stress on my child when I died. I wanted to be sure that he was taken care of. The reality is, that losing his mother is going to be such a difficult experience for him (I’ve been there), that I didn’t want him to have to worry about other things, like money, or who he should live with. So I spoke to his father, and I got a will, and we set up contingencies. It was strange, contemplating my own death. But I did it for him. Because I love him and want to take care of him, even when I’m not here any more. 

As I was reading Digital Legacy Plan, two things kept coming up for me: one was “holy crap I have a large digital footprint!” and the second was “I don’t want Michael to have to deal with all this after I’m gone.” 

So, yeah. My will is done, but it’s time for me to start working on my Digital Legacy Plan. To be fair, it’s going to be a significant amount of work, but it’s comforting to know that my wishes will be spelled out, and my loved ones will be spared the stress of having to guess about what to do with all my online “stuff.” 

It’s really worthwhile to get a copy of this book, if for the worksheets alone. It’s a great resource that will help you to organize your digital legacy, and then clearly spell out your wishes. 

1. Access. My first step is going to be to make a list of all of my digital assets (blogs, social networks, etc) and their login/password info. Obviously this needs to be stored in a secure place; either as a hard copy in my files, or in a password-protected file in the cloud. You also need to think about accounts you don’t use every day; like amazon, loyalty programs, that kind of thing. 
2. Wishes. Once you’ve cataloged all your digital assets, you need to decide what you want done with them. Thank goodness there’s a worksheet for that! Some social networks, like Facebook, allow you to create a “legacy” version of your account. Others you may just want deleted, or perhaps you want the account archived, downloaded, and then deleted. For me, I have many private conversations on messaging apps that I don’t think I’d want anyone to see, so those I will request to be deleted, unread. 
3. Set a digital guardian. For my will, I named an executor. That person is responsible for making sure my wishes are carried out. This person will be like your digital executor. They will need access to your wishes and also to your logins/passwords. 
4. Obituary. How do you want your death to be announced? What do you want said about you after you’re gone? For me, I think I’d like to write my own. But whatever you choose, there needs to be instructions, again. 

What’s your digital legacy going to be? This book was a real eye-opener for me, and I think it will be for you, as well. I highly recommend it. This is certainly a challenging topic for most, but that, I think, is exactly the reason why we need to be talking about it. 

The post What’s your Digital Legacy? appeared first on @RebeccaColeman.