Leadership Kentucky, one of the oldest and most prestigious statewide leadership development programs in the United States, is comprised of seven three-day sessions where participants gather to gain insight on the Commonwealth of Kentucky and its challenges and opportunities. Throughout the sessions, class members will meet with many of Kentucky’s current leaders and explore the state’s opportunities and resources.

Learn more from Leadership Kentucky.

I wasn’t planning on this post and frankly hadn’t realized that today marked eight years of full-time self-employment. It was a Google calendar reminder that went *ding* on my phone late last night, “BUSINESS ANNIVERSARY (2012)” Apparently, younger me knew that I’d forget to celebrate or spend a moment in gratitude. I’m thankful for her wisdom

The realization that today marked eight years comes at a time when I’ve felt a little stuck when it came to thinking about future plans and how I want to grow this company. I’m very happy and thankful for my work – I’ve not been able to take on a new client in years and that luxury is not lost on me! Still, with it being early in the year where resolutions and future plans are being shared, my brain has felt a bit like a blinking cursor on a blank page.

Today is a great day for a mental mind-shift into reflection for what the years have taught me, versus worrying about plotting a course for what’s next. In celebration and gratitude for eight years, here are eight crucial lessons I’ve learned as a full-time self-employed person.

1. Not everyone is your ideal customer

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to work with businesses of all sizes and in multiple industries. Over time, it’s become much easier to realize which attributes correspond best to my working style, communication, and personality. While work can’t always be 100% enjoyable, it is possible to minimize the friction encountered in the work itself. For example, a rigid, large health insurance company with a lot of layers and complexity isn’t as fun for me to work on as a small, woman-owned sports bra company whose product I use religiously. Being self-employed, it’s easy to overcommit to all projects because of the fear of business dropping off. In the end, that will wear you down mentally and physically, and you’ll spend more and more time browsing LinkedIn contemplating a leap back into the arms of corporate employment. The clients and work that energize, inspire, and make you proud are the ones to prioritize, always.

2. Show up every day as you would to an office

When you think of someone who is self-employed working out of their house, do you envision them in their pajamas sitting on their sofa with a laptop? It’s a really alluring part of self-employment: who doesn’t want to be comfy and cozy with all this flexibility?

My biggest productivity hack since being self-employed and working from home has been to show up for work just as I would at an office. This means getting dressed, doing my hair and makeup, and sitting in my dedicated home office. This routine helps my brain switch from “home” mode to “work” mode. And while I don’t usually wear shoes at home, if I’m having a particularly hard time concentrating, I’ll put on a pair of heels at my desk. It’s another trick to stop myself from slouching in my chair or getting too comfortable.

3. Accounting and systems are essential

After my first year of being self-employed, I ended up owing over $14,000 in taxes. It was a newbie mistake, not fully understanding different types of business structures versus straight self-employment income, the importance of tracking all expenses, keeping personal and business money separate, and learning how to estimate quarterly tax payments. It was an expensive and extremely stressful lesson in “get your shit together!”

Now, as tax season is here again, I’m super thankful at the systems in place that have me on top of my expenses/receipts, payroll, quarterly taxes, P&L statements, and mileage tracking. I am happy to push all of this data to my accountant without completely losing my cool or not knowing what to expect by way of what I may owe. That anxiety clouded my business for the first couple of years, and it was preventable.

Would a post about my current tools be helpful? Let me know if this is something you’d like to see.

4. Find support

It can be an emotional rollercoaster being your own boss. Connecting with like-minded other solopreneurs, business owners, work from homers, or people in the same industry is essential to feeling connected. There are days where my dog and my husband are the only other beings I come in contact with, so maintaining a connection to others is important. Being able to text or call a friend when you’re having a mental block about a project is really helpful. If you’re not sure who those people are in your life before starting your business, don’t worry! You can meet them through professional organizations, conferences, or even online through Facebook groups, Instagram, or Twitter.

5. The power of no

At the beginning of my business, I said yes to everything.

• Yes, complete stranger – you can pick my brain
• Yes, I will write you a super detailed plan of execution (that you will then take and implement yourself)
• Yes, I can offer this thing you’re asking for, even if it’s not my focus
• Yes, I can accept a lower rate on this project.
• Yes, I can take on more clients even though I’m already working 80 hours a week and can’t sleep with the stress

Saying “no” is really hard for someone like myself with people-pleasing tendencies. Over time, the value of “no” has paid dividends by way of more work that aligns with my strength, less time spent on unbillable work, and managing stress.

6. Vacations and holidays aren’t optional

This is less of a tip and more of a pain point I’m actively trying to address, but vacations and holidays are important! In the first few years working for myself, I didn’t take any vacation and was online for every holiday. I was “on” all the time, and it was mentally exhausting. Part of this is working in social media, but a bigger part is not setting better boundaries or expectations as to when I was available.

If you’re starting a business and know you won’t have employees right away, make sure that your clients know your availability, and start thinking of ways to have a backup if you’re a one-stop-shop. This could be utilizing one of your consultant friends from point 4 as fill-in/coverage if needed, writing in backup coverage into client contracts, and making sure your workload is at a manageable level so you’re not constantly pressed against a deadline. Everyone needs a break once-in-a-while, even from the baby that is your new business.

7. The value of contracts

Contracts and super clear communication are important to have from the beginning of any business relationship. Not having these means a lot of potential for ambiguity, a lot of back and forth, and unmanaged expectations on both sides of the relationship.

Imagine sending an invoice and not understanding that the recipient will only pay Net 60 instead of Net 30? Or what happens when a client requests 6 rounds of revisions to your work when you only anticipated 1? It may be tedious to outline every term for every project, but it will save you from uncomfortable situations and uncertainty down the line.

8. You don’t have to have everything figured out. It’s not possible.

I spent about 12 months leading up to me taking my business full-time telling myself that there were other, better, more established marketing consultants already doing the work I wanted to do. How could I create a plan that would make me succeed when they were already succeeding? (The comparison trap is a nasty thing.)

Layered on top of that was fear of not being able to see exactly how my business would grow. I loathe uncertainty. When I was an employee, I knew the amount that would be on my check twice a month. I didn’t have business expenses that I had to take care of out-of-pocket. I didn’t have to worry if there would be work for me to do the next day, month, or year. I knew if I did my job well, chances were good that with time, I would continue to earn some more money, or earn more perks like extra vacation time.

Let’s face it: even as an employee of another company, things can happen all the time. You can control the quality of your work, showing up on time, improve your skills, etc. Even with the best preparation, your employer could go out of business, the economy could tank, and more. Nothing is guaranteed. Understanding that a business is a little more volatile than being employed by a stable company means you have to be comfortable with accepting some more risk and focusing on what you CAN control.

Instead of spending time trying to orchestrate a plan for every scenario, focus on the things you can control. Some examples:

• Cultivating and maintaining relationships with potential clients and professional acquaintances
• Creating a professional development plan for yourself with educational opportunities: training, conference attendance, listening to podcasts, studying trends in your industry
• Asking your clients for testimonials for your future marketing purposes, and asking for introductions if you’re looking to grow
• Establish your personal and business budgets so you can adequately anticipate cash flow needs

Remember: “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” Don’t let it stop you from taking the leap.

Thank you’s: I have to give massive thanks to my two biggest clients that have literally been with me since the beginning, ENELL and Gwynnie Bee. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d have an 8+ year business relationship with two of my favorite companies as a consumer. I also have to give thanks to my Authentically Emmie friends and brand partners as that blog is a segment of this company. More love goes to frequent collaborator Brandi Koskie of Banter Strategy, and other friends who have had to listen to me talk shop for years now.

Three months after that, I left my corporate job for the uncertainty of self-employment, officially founding Authentically Social. Over the years of having this business, there have been a lot of pivots and figuring out how to maintain a workload that isn’t entirely overwhelming while also increasing my income. The keys to growth were found in service/topic alignment and income diversification.

In a couple of days, I’m headed back to Blissdom after they were gone for a few years. It’s returning to Nashville, and I’m excited to lead Round Table Discussions on Thursday about building diversified income streams within your business or blog.

If you’re interested in more on this topic, you can check out the Blissdom Podcast where I talked with Alli Worthington about income diversification, plus a few fun facts about myself.

If you’re going to be at Blissdom, please say hello! For those who are attending one of my sessions, I will share links to more resources and the worksheet at the conference.

Within the story, I was able to share how Authentically Social and my fashion and lifestyle blog, Authentically Emmie, go hand in hand.

Also featured in the video above is Josh Johnson of The Kentucky Gent, who I’ve known in this space for several years now. If you’re interested in more about influencer marketing, you can see the full piece, and another video featuring 3 additional Louisville-area influencers here.

Armed with my education and background in corporate marketing, I started Authentically Social in 2011 with the intent on providing digital marketing and social strategy consulting to businesses in the plus size fashion, fitness, and lifestyle space. To this day, my largest 2 clients are ones I’ve had since the beginning – and they first learned about me because of my blog.

The digital marketing space has evolved so much since 2011, and I look forward to seeing where it goes in the future.

Questions about influencer marketing or anything else you saw on Inside Influencing? Feel free to leave a comment or reach out.

The digital marketing landscape has changed drastically since we last blogged about it here in 2014. While we keep up on the changes for our clients, we’ve not been great about sharing with others.

This changes now. We’re working on creating content around all things digital marketing to keep things refreshed here on the regular.

So tell us the topics that are stumping you:

So tell us the topics that you’re interested in:

• Can’t figure out how to utilize a certain channel?
• Not sure if being on Instagram is right for you?
• Confused about the buzz behind Pinterest?
• Interested in learning more about how to structure an influencer marketing campaign?
• What exactly is a content strategy?

Let us know in the comments, or fill out this quick form.

While we can’t answer everyone individually, we will consider all questions for future blog content here. Can’t wait to hear your burning questions!

In the last post, we talked about why Pinterest is great for business (and when I say “business” you could also insert “blog” if that’s your angle.) Today, I’ll give a couple quick tips on how to monitor when other people are pinning content from your website that you might not realize.

Why it’s important to monitor Pinterest:

• Instant snapshot of engaged customers/prospects/fans: You can find active fans/users of your work, who were interested enough to be browsing your site and then share that content with their followers.
• An extra touchpoint: If you can easily see what others are pinning about your or your business, you can instantly give them a “like” on that pin or respond in a comment. It shows initiative and that you’re listening out for them. It also shows appreciation that they took the time to pin your content.
• Totally legit eavesdropping: In keeping an eye on what people are pinning, you may gain insight into how they plan on using your product, what they found most useful, and also what images people are drawn to from your site. It’s not enough information to drive a strong product or website strategy, but it’s good qualitative information to pay attention to.

How to monitor Pinterest:

• Pinterest Source: This is a simple trick. You can use a simple URL that will pull up pins from your site, or any other sites. You can use this to check out what’s being pinned on competitor sites if desired.

The URL is http://www.pinterest.com/source/SITENAME.COM/
(obviously changing out the site name)

This is an example of monitoring my blog, authenticallyemmie.com. From here, I’d go through and like the pins (clicking the heart that appears on hovering over a pin) and make sure I’m following those users.

• PinAlerts: Pinterest tools come and go like crazy, and its inevitable that as soon as I find one I like, it goes away. PinAlerts, however, has been pretty steady and consistent, plus – it’s free! You simply set up an account on pinalerts.com and enter the URLs you want to track. For each URL, you can set the alert time – weekly, daily, as it happens, etc. You’ll be emailed only as frequently as you ask for each site. Even though I periodically check Pinterest via source as outlined above, I love getting these daily snapshots for my blog, or for client sites. It instantly reminds me to go and take care of those pins instead of waiting a longer period of time and then scrolling through a lot more pins.

No matter which of these methods you use, you will see the same content. It all comes down to your delivery preference: do you need a little nudge like myself, or would you rather check it on your own schedule? Either way, happy monitoring!

Questions? Let me know in the comments.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some more information about using Pinterest for Business. As a network, Pinterest knows its value, and has added some great features specifically for business accounts, including Pinterest Analytics and as announced today, Rich Pins.

Here’s a great infographic detailing Pinterest statistics: how many people use it, and how they interact:

In coming weeks, we’ll discuss:

• Ways to use Pinterest
• How to find followers
• Ideas for integrating into existing marketing campaigns
• Tools for analyzing the effectiveness of your Pins

For now, consider signing up for a Pinterest Business account (it’s free, no worries!). If you already have a Pinterest account but it’s a personal account and you want it to be a business account, you can convert it without any problem. You’ll need to place a tracking pixel onto your website so Pinterest can accurately report the analytics information: that’s as painful as setup gets.

Let me know what questions you have in the comments and I’ll make sure to address them in future blog posts in this series. 

I received a kind note from a member who was in attendance about the presentation:

“Emily, I just wanted to complement you on your excellent presentation Tuesday at NAWBO. You are very engaging, an expetise, and it was very helpful. Plus I just checked your blog and I love it, too.”

To access the presentation and some referenced tools and articles, visit the presentation page here. 

Thanks to all who came out, and for NAWBO Lexington for inviting me.

“As a social marketer, you have to understand the industry, the company’s goals and product features, and interact with customers as a representative of the company, which you are,” she said. “You have to make it seamless so that people who are not on the payroll or are not in the physical location can’t tell.”

I’d love if you would check out the entire article here.

Contact me anytime to discuss how your company can incorporate social media to increase customer engagement, customer referrals, and find new prospects. Happy New Year!

To view the presentations and find links to associated resources, visit this page. Thanks to Commerce Lexington for having us and for the great audience. Let us know if you have any questions!

At the end of September, I had the opportunity to speak at FitBloggin, a conference for fitness bloggers, about using social media to drive blog traffic.  As a fitness blogger and a social media company owner, this was an awesome opportunity to present something I’m really excited about.

Session Overview:

So many of us love Facebook for personal use and staying in touch with friends. What if you could use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and other social media channels to increase blog traffic and build a stronger community? With existing social media sites gaining more mainstream popularity and new sites appearing monthly, how do you determine which are the best ones for increasing blog readership?

Topics covered include:

• An overview of the most popular social media sites and any emerging sites that could be beneficial to blog traffic
• Ways to optimize your presence on social media channels
• A set of tools you can use to more efficiently use your time on social media sites
• Ways to measure and evaluate which of your social media efforts are bringing in the most traffic

View the live blog recap here.

View the presentation and all associated resources here. 

As always, let me know if you have any questions!

At this point you could:

• Break out doing the Macarena
• Try to interrupt and let them you have hemorrhoids
• Silently start recalling the sequence of Pi

No matter what you do, their response would be the same: nothing. Their stream of self-promotion is apparently never-ending, and even doing a bad line dance can’t save you.

This is exactly what I think of when I see companies on social media who fail to respond to customer messages, take action on company social mentions, or include any personality in their communications. Instead, they see Twitter, Facebook, and in some cases Pinterest, as a way to just talk about themselves:

• We are awesome!
• Look at what we do!
• Look at our newest brochure!
• Look at our newest brochure in 140 characters!
• Look at the picture from our newest brochure!
• Did you see our new brochure?
• (If you’re lucky) Look – our newest brochure in Spanish!

Translation to the consumer? La la la la la….
we don’t want to can’t hear you!

There are very few differences between being a good social butterfly and being a good social company. Don’t approach social media channels as another way for you to “advertise” your business. Look at it as an ideal way to connect with your prospects and customers. Listen to what they’re saying, and respond publicly. Social media is to traditional advertising as Toto was to the Wicked Wizard – it removes the curtain. No longer can companies operate by sending out messages and shielding their ears to the responses. You can’t put an automated call system and computerized help systems behind a social media account and achieve the same personal communications expected by someone trying to reach out to you.

Don’t be a social media fire hydrant: if all you do is spew, no one will listen to you.

Want some great examples of interaction on Twitter?

• Peter Shankman and Morton’s Steakhouse
• Gaylord Opryland Hotel and the Alarm Clock
• The Starbucks Twitter Strategy

Do you have any good examples of businesses effectively interacting via social media? Or how about some examples of a social open fire hydrant? Share below!

Do you have a Facebook Page for your brand? Have you added your Facebook Timeline photo? Did you know that there are restrictions on what can be included there – including URLs? Here’s an excerpt and link to the full article.

Yesterday, there was a lot of buzz on Twitter and Facebook about the implementation of Timeline on Facebook Pages. Yes, the layout change that came to personal profiles is now making its way to Facebook Pages. Before you switch your blog or company Page over to the new layout, there are some key things you should know… <read full article>

Questions? Feel free to ask!

Responsibilities:

• Assist in copywriting needed for websites, emails, marketing materials, announcements, news, etc.
• Assist in updating our press contact lists, including traditional and online media outlets.
• Assist in research to be carried out in supporting client initiatives
• Other duties as assigned

The Ideal Candidate:

• A self-starter with tons of energy
• A whiz at finding things on Google (or being resourceful in general)
• A clear fluent telephone voice and excellent communication skills
• A college degree and or applicable experience
• A genuine interest in learning more about social media marketing
• Self motivated, self-confident, and self-determined

— This position is now closed and we are evaluating all candidates —

1. Are you a native Kentuckian? Why have a Kentucky business?

I am not a native Kentuckian, but moved here when I was thirteen. It took about twenty years of being here to stop being so stubborn about how awesome this state is. The quality of life is great, people are friendly, and the cost of living is low. Having a Kentucky business means my costs to operate aren’t exorbitant and I can provide great value to companies particularly from out-of-state who might not be able to explore social media marketing with agencies in their particular markets [Read more here…]

1) There is no reason to have a company blog just for the sake of having a blog. First, ask what are the goals of the blog?

2) Strategize: What are you going to talk about and who’s going to create the content?

3) Think about frequency and consistency: start a calendar and schedule posts for particular dates and times. 

Read the entire post for all the tips.

Here’s a recent article in the Lexington Herald-Leader in which I was quoted about using Pinterest for website traffic. I’ll delve more into statistics and tips in an upcoming blog post.

Two things with social that I see all the time from both individuals and small businesses:

1. Poor timing: This includes not responding in a timely manner (an expectation of “timely” is set by your customer), not engaging while your customer is online (instead, only when it is convenient for you to do so), and not posting content when your customers are most likely to see it.
2. Improper context: This one stretches the gamut of possible oopsies, from misappropriate use of a hashtag to reacting in haste to a negative post without reading the entire background. This causes major foot-in-mouth syndrome.

To fix poor timing:

• Think about when people are using your product or when they need you. I had an experience with Verizon Wireless this week where I had no email service and it seemed to be a widespread problem. Unfortunately, when the social media team clocked out, all the in-progress help they were giving users went with it.
• You can utilize services like Crowdbooster so you can see when your followers are most active so your tweets have the most potential for impact.
• You can also just observe when your followers seem to be most active. When are they responding to your blog or to your Facebook posts? You can also look at research like that in the infographic below from Argyle Social.

To fix improper context:

• Listen before you pipe in. If you see your name come up, make sure you read the conversation participants past tweets so you can reply with proper context.
• If you’re unsure of context, just ask. A short “is there something I can help you with?” goes a long way.

We are busy putting lots of information up on this site, so sit back, explore around, and let us know what you think!