The race for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat is one of the hottest competitions of the political cycle. With a divided 50/50 senate, the stakes are high for both parties to keep every seat they currently hold, and flip as many as they can. Pennsylvania is one of a handful of races that will almost certainly decide who holds the Senate majority in 2022.

While Neither John Fetterman (Democrat) nor Dr. Mehmet Oz (Republican) have yet cleared their fields to become their party’s nominee, they are both frontrunners to do so.

Fetterman, the current Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, is a fiercely progressive politician with a large national profile. He is currently dominating fundraising among Democratic hopefuls. He has run for US Senate before and announced his candidacy for Senate this time around in early February of 2021.

His likely opponent in the general election is Dr. Mehmet Oz, a newcomer to politics… as well as to Pennsylvania for that matter. He also got into the race in late - November of 2021 - and only after front runner Sean Parnell, an accused abuser, who enjoyed the endorsement of Donald Trump, dropped out in disgrace.

Dr. Oz is a TV doctor who got his start as a regular on the Oprah Winfrey show. He’s as famous as he is disreputable. He has taken a strong anti-establishment stance and is using his reputation as a doctor to take some not-so-healthy positions on COVID, just like he has on a whole host of other issues and products throughout his career.

The Cook Political Report calls this race a toss up. In a cycle this contentious, with literal control of the Senate on the line, every aspect of these candidates’ campaigns matters. Their ground games matter, their rhetoric matters, and in our pandemic reality, their digital programs sure as hell matter.

Both of these candidates are masters of media in their own way. So let’s dive in and learn some lessons from each of their campaigns by exploring how they have each chosen to approach their respective digital platforms.
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Like any business, organization or nonprofit, a candidate’s website is their home base. It’s where people go to learn more, donate and sign up to get involved. 

A candidate – like any other "brand" – must know what goal(s) it has for site visitors and build their site accordingly. 

So how are the Fetterman and Oz’s sites?

When it comes to messaging, Fetterman and Oz each want to tell you about themselves and their ideas. Makes sense.

While they might have the same general goal, they deviate significantly in both content and delivery.

Fetterman (left) and Dr. Oz (right) tell their stories in different ways - some more personal than others.

The first way in which their messaging differs is in the way they tell prospective voters who they are as people. 

Fetterman’s “About” information is personal and focused on his family - including his Twitter-famous dog Levi. It breaks down Fetterman’s long history as an activist and fighter for the people of Pennsylvania. It shows what he stands for and how he’s advocated for his values and his neighbors throughout his career. 

Dr. Oz’s bio info on the other hand is... well let's call it concise. His “Why I’m Running” page presents an America which has been led astray and forced off the rails, especially throughout the COVID pandemic. His site mostly talks about his work as a doctor and his TV show. He also provides a very short statement on his family. 

Fetterman and Dr. Oz take different approaches to talking about the issues that are important to their campaign.

Now let's look at how they talk about the issues that matter to them.
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Fetterman uses short videos to talk about the issues that make up his platform. These videos often feature stories from Pennsylvanians and Fetterman himself in ways that make the issues personal and relatable.
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Alternatively, Dr. Oz has short digital cards which share a brief message (about a paragraph), with his stance on each issue that is revealed when moused-over. These often call back to his experiences as a doctor, which seems to inform most of his ideas. When one of these cards is clicked on, it takes you to a page like this one which is barely legible and contains no more information on the issue.

One important thing to note about messaging lies in the ease with which John Fetterman’s website can be viewed in Spanish. Pennsylvania has over 600,000 Spanish-speaking residents and Fetterman’s campaign wants to make sure that they can reach every one of them. Fetterman clearly cares about accessibility. Dr. Oz not so much.

Once you’ve shared your story and ideas with someone, it’s time to get them to take action. In politics, action typically comes in three forms - volunteering, voting, and fundraising. Once again these two candidates take different approaches.

The Fetterman campaign encourages folks to volunteer throughout the website, but also helps people to get registered to vote and receive their ballots by mail. This is a great way to help voters prepare for any upcoming election and ensures that you’re helping to register voters that may already be interested in supporting you. 

Furthermore, Fetterman puts his texting program right on the front page of his website, making it easy to sign up and get looped into the campaign.

There's a definite difference in volunteer opportunities between the Fetterman and Oz campaign.

Interesting differences can also be seen in the types of opportunities that each candidate offers for volunteering. Fetterman focuses on more digital, COVID-safe opportunities such as sending texts, socially distant door knocking, and hosting Zoom events, while Dr. Oz encourages volunteers to sign petitions, knock on doors, and host events at their homes or other locations.

In terms of fundraising, both campaigns run pretty standard donation and merch stores pages through ActBlue (Fetterman) and WinRed (Oz), but they do have some interesting features on both of their websites that try to encourage small-dollar donations and work towards donor retention.

One of the most interesting donation features from Fetterman’s website is the Levi Fetterman nose "boop". This is a fun idea for donors who are familiar with Fetterman’s dog or who just want to make a quick donation. (This same GIF was also used prominently in a Fetterman advertising campaign shortly after he launched his campaign). 

Dr. Oz has some tricks up his sleeve too when it comes to boosting his campaign’s bottom line. These include two features - pre-checked boxes for donors and pop-ups.

Despite being shady as hell, the pre-checked box has become a mainstay in Republican digital fundraising and Dr. Oz makes sure that he can maximize your donations… whether you meant to make your donation recurring or not! The first pre-checked box commits a donor to a recurring monthly donation matching their original contribution, and the second box gets you to sign up for Dr. Oz’s “Mid-Month Money Pledge.” 

This means that a user who quickly donates $10 once could end up donating up to twice more that month, whether they want to or not. If this type of donation tactic seems sketchy to you, you’re not alone. The F.E.C. has asked Congress to ban this type of fundraising tactic, since... you know... it verges on the edge of theft.

Dr. Oz also uses a pop-up box that tracks your mouse and prevents you from leaving the donation page until you close the box out. There’s nothing like Dr. Oz staring into your soul while you desperately try to climb out of the far-right pit you’ve found yourself in.
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​Finally, one cool feature worth highlighting is John Fetterman’s chatbot on his website, which is run through a Facebook Chat Plugin. 

The chatbot has three paths based on voting status including in-state, out-of-state, and ineligible to vote. Throughout these paths, the bot collects valuable information for the campaign such as contact information, how likely a person is to support Fetterman or other Democratic candidates, and can even sign people up for campaign communications and help them make donations.

All in all, we can see two very different approaches to designing a campaign website that ultimately lead us to the same goals - politicians looking to show who they are and what they’re about while making it as easy as possible to drive action on their website.
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While websites are a more static place for folks to interact with a campaign, social media should be used to keep a politician’s followers up to date on what’s going on with the campaign, what's happening in the community, and show followers how they can get involved. 

Both of these candidates have unique skills that help them greatly on social media. Fetterman’s personality and strong ideas lend themselves to creating social media content that drives donations and engagement from progressives throughout the country. Dr. Oz started his campaign with millions of followers across his pages, thanks to his long history in the public spotlight. 

To learn some lessons from John Fetterman and Dr. Oz’s social media, we can break down their followings by platform, how often they post, their follower engagement levels, and also look at some unique properties of each candidate’s social media strategy.

 First, by reviewing the overall followings for each politician’s account, we can see that Dr. Oz entered into this race with a much larger total following than John Fetterman. 

While his numbers look big on their face (huge really!), we need to consider a couple of things. First, Dr. Oz converted his TV show accounts to campaign accounts. This means that although his following may look large, the majority of his followers are likely not Pennsylvanians or even out-of-state political supporters. Heck a ton of them likely don’t live in America, and a whole bunch more probably do not agree with his political platform. 

The second interesting note here is that at the time of this writing, Dr. Oz has still not really converted his show’s Instagram account to a political one. This is a surprising choice given the new mission of his accounts on his other platforms, as well as his massive following on Instagram (over a million!).
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Posting frequency
Since the start of their respective campaigns, the Fetterman campaign has posted on Facebook an average of 1.8x per day to Dr. Oz’s 2.6x per day. 

On Twitter, the numbers are closer with 2.6 tweets per day for Fetterman and 2.8 tweets per day for Oz. 

Lastly, Fetterman takes the easy win on Instagram with an average of just shy of one post per day while Dr. Oz has only posted about his campaign once.

While Dr. Oz is on TikTok, he's only posted a small handful of times since the start of his campaign. 

Engagement
While posting often is important to growing a following, it’s engagement that really matters. We can see an interesting shift here when we comparing the two candidates’ Facebook accounts. Note that while Dr. Oz has a FAR larger following, Fetterman gets a much higher engagement rate per post.

This makes sense - people follow Fetterman on social because they like him and his politics. People follow Dr. Oz on social because they like quack science and Oprah told them too. Not exactly a captive audience when it comes to running a political campaign.

Engagement can also give us insight into which of our candidates’ platforms figure most prominently to their social media strategy. For example, Twitter is Fetterman’s most prominent platform with a top post engagement total of 154,594 engagements. ​

Alternatively, out of all of his posts across platforms, Dr. Oz has found the most engagement on a Facebook post with 80,451 engagements. But bear in mind, he has millions of followers - so while that’s a lot of engagements, the engagement rate is actually quite small.

Last but not least, each candidate has unique parts of their social media campaign which extend the strengths of their messaging strategies. 
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For John Fetterman’s campaign it’s his family members. This includes an Instagram account for his wife Gisele and a Twitter account for his dogs, Levi and Artie. These accounts both have sizable followings (31,900 followers for Gisele and 24,100 followers for the Fetterman pups), and allow the Fetterman campaign to amplify messages and show a different side of John Fetterman’s life.

Again, Dr. Oz’s social media strength lies in his ability to easily produce high-quality media with his team. This becomes incredibly apparent when viewing Dr. Oz’s few TikToks or his videos on his YouTube account which has quite a large following. Anyone can learn how to have a strong presence on camera, but Dr. Oz has been developing his presence and persona for decades.

What We Learned
So what? Now that we’ve taken a deeper look into John Fetterman and Dr. Oz’s digital media presence, what can we take away from our deep dive? 

Well, for one thing, this is a great reminder that your digital presence matters. A lot. You need to post quality content that is geared towards your audience, create a website that tells your story, and make sure that all elements of your digital campaign are designed to meet your organizational goals.

Fetterman’s campaign tells the story of a progressive fighter who’s worked hard to make his state better. Dr. Oz on the other hand reaches his audience by leveraging his unique character to make a stance that can appear both authoritative on issues such as COVID while also flying in the face of what he sees as the “establishment.” 

One important lesson is that where your audience comes from matters. Anyone can get followers in the wrong ways. But if your audience doesn't care about your content, it doesn't really matter how many of them there are. Social media (and digital in general), like everything, is about quality, not quantity. Keep that in mind the next time you're worried about your Facebook Likes not going up fast enough. Sure, keep an eye on that number. But pay way more attention to your engagement rates than your page likes.

Hopefully this was helpful. And never forget - we dug into Dr. Oz’s digital program so you wouldn’t have to!
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Head to joshklemons.com/politics to learn more about how we help political campaigns step up their digital programs or drop us a line today.
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This post was written in collaboration with Nick Dotson.

Sometimes you can say everything you need to say in just a few words. For everything else, there’s tweet threads!

Twitter limits posts to 280 characters. If that’s not enough space to get your message across, you can thread your tweets together to create a longer piece of content.

This was actually a user generated concept — users looking to go beyond characters limits (at the time a paltry 140!) started simply replying to their own tweets. Sometimes once, sometimes dozens of times. They literally started “threading” their tweets. As Twitter so loves to do, they took tools the users were already hacking together and implemented them into the platform.

But there was a problem. Until recently, Twitter’s API didn’t allow 3rd party tools to create threaded tweets. Mindbogglingly, this included Tweetdeck, which is owned by Twitter and STILL doesn't have the functionality! That’s right, if you want to schedule tweets in a platform owned by Twitter, you have long had the option to do so through Tweetdeck. But even today, you can only create single tweets - not tweet threads.

The same is true of pretty much every other third-party tool I’ve tested. Until I found Publer.

Publer let you schedule responses to posts on any channel, even with an optional built-in delay. And for Twitter, they let you schedule as many responses as you want - aka - tweet threads!

Start by typing your first tweet.

Then click those talk bubbles underneath.

Toggle on the option to "add follow up comments."

Note: if you've created content for more than one channel (ie: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn AND Twitter) you can easily select which account(s) you want to add follow-up comments too.

Once you've selected Twitter, you can add as many additional tweets as you want:

Add the Publer Chrome plugin to your browser, and then anytime you are surfing the net and see something interesting, you can easily share it without ever leaving your tab.
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Pretty convenient for a social media manager on the go, no?!
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Kevin McCarthy just broke the record for the longest-ever floor speech in the history of the House. He spoke for 8 hours and 33 minutes.

Good for him! He put on his big boy pants and worked really, really hard to ensure that Congress couldn’t do jack for working people in this country... at least for one more night.

Fortunately, the Democrats in the House simply waited him out, and then quickly voted yes on Build Back Better, the bill he was so desperate to prevent moving forward.

Instead of letting a bill pass that would revitalize the US economy and provide $1.75 trillion dollars to build up our country’s infrastructure and fight climate change, McCarthy chose instead to ramble on... all freaking night.

Just to put this in perspective, McCarthy filibustered long enough to play two rounds of golf with his puppet master Donald Trump. Instead of watching McCarthy ramble on about nothing, you could have binged an entire season of Mad Men. In the time he used to set our country back, you could have driven from the House Chamber all the way to Detroit,  where you could witness our country’s crumbling infrastructure firsthand. 

While McCarthy may have been pretty proud of himself for forcing all eyes on him, his Democratic colleagues — the ones working to make real progress for our country — were none too happy. Lucky for us, through the amazing power of Twitter, we can get their ? takes first-hand.

Here are 15 of the best tweets from McCarthy's Democratic colleagues, sent during a floor speech that will be sure to go down in the history books... as one of American politics' biggest wastes of time. (Alongside this infamous gem of course.)

1) Grace Meng, NY

2) Mark Pocan, WI 

3) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

4) Jamie Raskin, MD

5) Chellie Pingree, ME

6) Ayana Pressley, MA

7) Lori Trahan, MA

8) Cori Bush, MO

​9) ​Mondaire Jones, NY

10) Andy Levin, MI

11) Ilhan Omar, MN​

12) Nikema Williams, GA

13) Adam Schiff, CA

14) Tim Ryan, OH

15) Eric Swalwell, CA

Any of your favorites not make the cut? Share them in the comments or tag me into the conversation on Twitter.

 In Episode 13 of #StepUpYourSocial, we discussed why you should be blogging.
Today let’s talk about how you should approach writing content for your blog.
In this episode, we cover a lot of best practices for blogging in 10 minutes or less including:

• The Goldilocks approach to finding good topic areas
• How to make your content easy to skim
• How to write for your audience, even if you're not a great writer
• The ideal length of a blog post (hint: it's exactly how long it needs to be and not one word longer!)
• And the importance of writing for Google. Or Facebook. Or both.

Tune in today and then get ready to step up your blogging!
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​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.​

If you aren’t already blogging… you should be.

We did a deep dive into why in Episode 13. But the short version:

• It provides you content you can use to drive traffic to your website.
• It’s great for your SEO - Search Engine Optimization
• And it clarifies you as an expert in your field.

For more on all three of these reasons, head back to episode 13 and dig in.
So that’s why you should be blogging.

Today let’s talk about how you should approach writing   content for your blog.

First things first: a blog post should answer a question. It doesn’t literally have to be titled with a question, though that doesn’t hurt.

The question should be specific enough that people are looking for the answer, and broad enough that you can turn it into a full-length blog post.

A while back, I did a blog post on the Evolution of Instagram. That topic is potentially HUGE - but I was answering a specific question: How has Instagram changed over the years.

-What was the score of last night’s game? A bit too specific.
-Let’s do a full annotated history of our local sports team, along with in-depth explorations of every players’ personal journey to get there, the story of the team mascot and a recap of every game they’ve played since 1945. A bit too broad.
-What can we learn about our favorite team based on their playing last night? Sweet spot!

You can write pages on that topic, without ever losing the thread of why you are writing the post - or more importantly - why someone might want to read it.

So answer a question. Specifically.

Next up: make your post easy to skim.

No matter how captivating your writing, some people are not going to be interested in pouring through every word.

User headers. And subheaders. And sub-subheaders.

Use bullet points and lists. Please LOVE lists.

Keep your sentences short.

Keep your paragraphs short.

Use formatting - like bold, italics and underline - to make it easier for your reader to know what’s the most important content in the page.

If you can, use images and graphics to help make your content flow.

The word I like to use when it comes to content written for the internet: digestable. How easily can someone digest what you are trying to impart. If it’s not easily digestable - they will just move on.

You don’t have to be a great writer to be a great blogger. You just have to break things down in a way that your audience can follow.

So answer a question and keep your content easily digestable.

If you want to connect with a wide audience, don’t assume they know… well anything!

The goal of writing for an audience is not to make yourself sound smart. It’s to make them feel smart.

Picture a real person in your head when you write (or at least when you edit) your content. You are an expert in your field (if you weren’t, you couldn’t be blogging on it!). Unless you only want to talk to other experts, don’t assume they know the lingo. Spell out acronyms for them, explain why something that seems obvious to you should matter to them. Write for them as if they don’t know what you are talking about. Because frankly, if they knew what you were talking about - they probably wouldn’t be reading your blog post!

So answer a question with easily digestible content in a way that makes your audience feel smarter.

Next up: write your blog post for Google. Or Facebook. Or Both.

What does this mean? If you want a post to do well on Google — meaning you want people to find it when they do a search on the topic — know your keywords before you start. What’s a keyword (bearing in mind a keyword can be a phrase as well)? It’s the thing someone is going to put into Google that will hopefully help them find your post!

Before I wrote my blog post on the Evolution of Instagram, I did research into which keywords people were actually searching for on the topic. Were they looking for a history of Instagram? A breakdown of how Instagram has changed? Something else altogether? They were looking for an Evolution of Instagram. So I wrote my blog post accordingly. And my blog post is now on the first page of Google when someone searches for that keyword.

How did I get it on the first page of Google? I used Evolution of Instagram as my url slug (the part after the .com in my website). I used it in my title. I worked it into my copy as often as I could without sounding redundant (if your copy sounds like it’s been “stuffed” with keywords you will be penalized by Google, not to mention by your annoyed readers!).

How did I know that this was a keyword worth optimizing for? I did research. There are loads of free and paid tools out there you can use. I like one called Ubersuggest. You can also just use Google directly - run a few searches and see what comes up. Did one query give you 20 hits and another 200,000? Well that’s good to know, isn’t it!

Not every blog post needs to be written for Google.

But if it’s not written for Google, make sure you’re writing it for Facebook!

If you don’t have to worry about people searching for your content - because it’s something timely, interesting to you and your audience but not necessarily to the world, or for any other reason, then be sure the title helps it pop.

Let’s say you’re writing a post about the ways that your industry has changed, and what it means for consumers. And, just so we can get specific, let’s say your industry is artisanal sourdough bread .

If you’re writing for Google, you might go with: How Sourdough Baking Has Changed Over The Years, or What Do I Need To Make Sourdough?

If you’re writing for Facebook, you might go with something more like: Finding the Sweet Within Your Sourdough! Or 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Sourdough… But Should!

No one is going to search for those latter titles - but they are fun and have the potential to do great on Facebook!

In this day and age, if your content isn’t written for Google OR Facebook, it’s written for no one. So pick one - or find a way to tailor it to both - and get to writing.

To recap:

• Know the question you are trying to answer BEFORE you start writing.
• Make your content easily digestible.
• Write to make your audience feel smarter.
• Optimize your post for Google. Or Facebook. Or both.

One last thing: folks always want to know how long their posts should be. Google likes long form content, so if you’re writing for Google, keep that in mind. That said, I prefer the following: your content should be exactly how long it needs to be and not one word longer.

You’re not doing yourself any favors adding fluff to a post. Google will see through it. So will your readers. Tell them what they need to know and let them get on with their day.

Happy blogging y’all!

What do you do at the end of your customer lifecycle? Do you go above and beyond to ensure that the customer who is moving on never forgets just how much they love you?
Chewy is a pet supply company. They know their customers will have to cancel their auto-renewal products... eventually ? ? ?
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But Chewy doesn't just offer canceling clients full refunds. They take their "marketing generosity" to the next level.

They don’t just want to get out of the way. They want to be a part of the family.

In this episode of Step Up Your Social, we take a look at how Chewy creates unyielding brand loyalty from their customers, even as those customers are canceling their orders.

We then give some thought to how *you* can keep your client lifecycle going, even as it seems like it might be wrapping up for the foreseeable future.

Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

If you’re a pet person, you know how much joy your little furry (or scaly or feathery) friend can bring into your life.

Sure there are chores associated with having a pet: They have to be cleaned, walked, taken to the vet… did I mention the endless cleaning?! But through it all, our days are just better with a pet at our side.

Unfortunately, most pets have shorter life cycles than us pet owners. 

You might enjoy your fish for a few months, your bird for years, or your dog or cat for decades. But eventually, that hard day will arrive when you have to say goodbye to them… for good.

So now grab a tissue, wipe your eyes and take off your pet owner hat and replace it with your digital marketer hat.

If you’re in the business of selling products to pet owners, this cycle can create a real challenge for you. When someone loses a pet, your customer cycle for them ends. At least for the time being.

There aren’t TOO many industries where customer service reps have to field questions from the grieving as a regular part of their job.

Selling pet products is DEFINITELY one of them.

So you know that awful day is coming for every one of your customers. What do you do?
If you’re Chewy, you use that awful day to builder deeper and more meaningful relationships with your customers.

Head to Twitter and search @chewy and the word died and you will find countless stories all getting at the same thing - my pet died. I had regular packages getting delivered from Chewy. I called to cancel and not only did they refund my money, they told me to keep the food and donate it to some other pet owner who needed it.

AND NOT ONLY THAT! Loads of people shared stories that they got flowers in the mail from Chewy expressing their condolences. I even saw people posting about Chewy sending them oil paintings of their passed pups!

To quote just one of the many tweets you’ll find when you search: “That’s all class.”
Here’s the thing - you can find these posts all over Twitter. But I first learned about this tactic from a random post in a Facebook Group.

And I can pretty well guarantee you that anytime a first-time pet-owning friend asks someone on the receiving end of Chewy’s — let’s call it “marketing generosity” -- where they should buy their pet supplies, they aren’t just going to recommend Chewy — they are going to do so empathically, as if it’s a family company.

Could Chewy simply offer full refunds and call it a day?

Sure.

You might even see tweets letting you know that Chewy customer service makes it easy to cancel orders when your pet departs.

But by going from easy to compassionate, Chewy takes their relationships with their customers to another level.

They don’t just want to get out of the way. They want to be a part of the family.

On a P&L, this might seem bad for business. You are building deep bonds with someone who no longer needs your services.

But pet owners are pet owners through and through. It might be weeks or months before they get back on the horse (or kitty or puppy or chameleon). It might even be years. But they will almost certainly get another pet!

And even if they don’t, they will have friends and family members who do.

Chewy sees these regular order cancellations not as an end of their relationships, but as the start of a whole new one, one deeper and with more intimacy between them and their customer.

And it pays off for them big time - don’t believe me? Just head to Twitter or Google or reddit or Facebook and poke around! The stories are endless.

The takeaway here: wow your customers, even if they’re no longer your customers. Host free classes teaching people how to be better at something related to whatever you sell. If you ship products, make the packaging so fun people can’t help but post a picture of it on Instagram. If you’re a nonprofit and someone sends you a gift, do you send a thank you that let’s them know you appreciate them… or do you send them a letter that knocks their socks off?

The person who bought your product or donated money might never do so again. So what?! They are the people most likely to spread the word about how great you are to their networks.

Make it easy for them to do so and more importantly , give them a reason to want to!
At the end of the day, remember that you can’t just sell pet stuff. You have to be a pet person! I hope you have the same passion for whatever you are selling or advocating for online, as your typical pet owner has for their furry, four-legged friend!

​Like I said. Easy!
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The Posts Guide lets you search and select from your own posts along with, possibly more importantly, your Saved Posts. ​
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Once you've published your Guide, they're actually super easy to find. Just head to your homepage and navigate to the map icon directly under your profile. If you haven't yet created a Guide, you won't find the option (the same is true for IGTV and Reels).

You can also visit other people's profiles and click on their Guides the same way (if they've created any).

Want to see an example of an Instagram Guide? Here's one I made that's just pics of the Wisconsin Capitol. (Noticing a trend? I freaking love that building!)

Don’t forget, this feature is quite new as of this writing. There’s plenty to explore, and you can find your own way to use this tool uniquely.

Now... who wants to make a Guide explaining how to make Guides? Have fun and don’t forget to tag me (@jlemonsk) when you post your first Guide! I definitely want to see it!
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Want to know more about how Instagram has evolved over the years? Check out this Evolution Of Instagram I put together.

And then check out this episode of my podcast, Step Up Your Social, where I cover 10 Tricks and Hacks to Step Up Your Instagram Stories.

Check Your Analytics
Wondering who watched your Story and which Stories inspired actions on your account? Analytics aren't quite able to read minds, but they are definitely the next best thing.  

During the 24 hours your Story is live, you’ll notice in the bottom-left of the screen “Seen by x,” so you know how many people viewed your story. Tap here to see more detailed analytics of how your Story performed.

On the analytics screen, you can see both who viewed your story and what actions they took (for example, if they skipped your story or watched the next one), Instagram will break that down for you. This can be helpful if you’re posting 20 times a day and want to know what’s connecting with your audience... and what isn't!

Ok, now that we’re all caught up with the basics, so let’s talk hacks!
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Everything you've seen in this post can be created directly in Instagram. But if you want to take your Story game to the next level — or if you want to innovate some hacks of your own — feel free to try out some of these third-party apps.

These design tools are useful beyond Instagram, with templates and editing capabilities to make almost anything you need for your social media program. 

Adobe Photoshop: The gold standard of image editing, Photoshop now has a great mobile-friendly version of the app
Adobe Spark: A browser-based editor with thousands of fun templates
Canva: Similar to Spark, Canva is a user-friendly, browser-based image editor
InShot: A powerful video editing tool with cool filters

These next 3 apps focus specifically on Stories, and each has a free or paid option, so you can take your content as far as you can imagine.

Over:  Easy to edit templates for beautiful stories
Unfold: Story-editing tool with beautiful, designer-built templates
Instories: A personal favorite, this is imho the most fun story editor with dynamic and fluid titles and video frames that make your Stories look quite professional without much effort at all

Your Turn!
What are some of your favorite strategies, tricks or hacks that you have been using to step up your Instagram story game? I want to hear about them. Hit me up on Instagram (again, I’m @jlemonsk), or on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn where I’m Reverbal Communications.

Or… show off what you’ve learned! Make a cool Instagram Story and use the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.

If you tag me in your Stories, you better believe I’m gonna share it! So hit me up!

Now what are you waiting for? Get out there and step up your Story game!​

There are hundreds of millions of pieces of content created for the internet every day Want to break through the noise? The best writing won't stop someone's thumbs from scrolling through their feed. You have to first nab them with an eye-catching pic. Then you might have a shot to keep their attention long enough to read about your new offer, hear your fundraising pitch, or learn more about whatever you're talking about.

​My general go to stock image site for finding high quality, free* photos online is Unsplash. Unsplash refers to itself as "the internet's source of freely-usable images. Powered by creators everywhere." It's a website full of beautiful, interesting and dynamic photos from all over the world. Type in whatever you need in the search bar and get ready to scroll through countless wonderful photos, brilliantly capturing your subject matter.

But representation matters — especially to kids. Early impressions leave an indelible mark that shape what children imagine is possible. Think a picture is worth a thousand words? It’s probably closer to a a few million! 

High-quality, representative stock photography is absolutely crucial for any business, whether you’re writing a blog post, creating a graphic or promoting an event. 

I use Unsplash all the time. But sometimes I need photos more geared specifically towards diversity, intersectionality or multiculturalism. While scrolling Unsplash will typically get me where I need to be, there are other options out there that focus specifically on representing the under-represented through high-quality stock photography. 

Here is a compilation of 10 free (or affordable) stock photo sites that go further than tossing a BIPOC cherry-on-top of a scoop of vanilla. You might even say these collections are pretty much the whole damn sundae. ​

*Quick caveat: I'm not a lawyer and I'm certainly not your lawyer. While many of these sites offer free stock photos for you to use, I'm not telling you what you can and can't do with them. If you're worried about what's okay or not, talk to a lawyer, read the fine print, or... you know... head to Google and read up.

5. Picnoi
Picnoi is a hand-picked collection teeming with great shots of hip, young Black & Brown folks. You can also browse their co-op's collection directly in Unsplash.

10. Salam Stock
A lot of stock sites can really miss the mark when trying to depict modern Muslim life. Salam Stock remedies that with a hefty collection that includes free and paid plans. ​

Those are a few diversity-first stock photo sites I've found helpful over the years. Do you have any to add to the list? I'd love to hear about them. Share them in the comments or slide on over to my DMs.

I'd love to see how you put these new resources to use. Tag me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook when you post your awesome, new, diverse content.

​Have fun!

You know the old saying that the only constant is change?

Well, that never been more true than when talking about social media.

You go to bed understanding exactly how a platform works — you wake up to find that everything has changed. There are new features, but also missing features, and moved features, and some features that are still there but no longer work. Arggghhh. It’s enough to make you logoff and go refill your coffee. But when it comes to the big platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit… they know you’ll be back. So you just have to sit back down, pound that coffee, and get used to their radical new designs.
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It’s been just shy of 10 years since Instagram was first launched in the app store. In a lot of ways, Instagram today is still very similar to the platform it was way back then (ten years is a lifetime in tech!). But while Instagram might feel pretty similar day in and day out, they’ve actually been rolling out new products and features pretty consistently year after year.

They have also hit some pretty big milestones along the way.
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So let’s dig in and breakdown some of those key new features and major milestones in this Evolution of Instagram.
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Instagram just keeps on growing. By June of 2016 they had 500 million monthly active users. Which, just to stay on theme, made their “population” bigger than any country in the world except for China or India.
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There’s an old adage in the social media world: when a platform becomes popular, Facebook will aim to own it or clone it.

While they managed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp (as well as a slew of other companies that aren’t quite household names), a couple of the big players eluded them.

They desperately wanted Twitter. But Twitter wouldn’t sell. So in short order, Facebook introduced hashtags, verified accounts, trending content (now defunct) and a bunch of other features that were all “inspired” by Twitter. (Ie: they couldn't own it, so they went to work trying to clone it.)

But Facebook’s appetite to consume Twitter was nothing compared to the newer kid on the block, Snapchat.

Snapchat, launched in 2011, was immediately popular with the youth, a demographic that Zuck knew he needed to keep satisfied and clicking if he wanted to remain at the head of the social media table.

In 2013, just two-years after launch, he offered $3 billion to buy them out. They refused. Facebook reportedly tried again shortly before Snap went public. He was again rebuffed.

That second attempt happened in 2016. Coincidently, that’s the same year that all the primary platforms in the Facebook universe (that’s Facebook itself, Messenger, WhatsApp and of course Instagram) rolled out Stories.

Stories are ephemeral content (they disappear after 24 hours) that are intended to be less perfectly quaffed, more fun and allow a user to post as often as they want throughout the day without worrying about bothering the almighty algorithm.

While Snapchat is still doing its thing, there’s no doubt that the rollout of Stories slowed their growth considerably.
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I’m not gonna lie — I’m one of those people that’s reluctant to update the iOS on my phone for fear of messing with something that’s not broken.

I was probably a year behind the current iOS when Instagram Stories introduced GIF stickers (GIFs are short videos that play on repeat) and I was so anxious to get access to them, I updated my phone.

My phone was fine, but alas, it was months before the amazing GIF library found its way into my account. Why? That’s just the way it goes sometimes. Instagram and Facebook don’t typically rollout new features to everyone all at once.

But suffice to say, I eventually got them and two plus years on, the novelty has still not worn off. Not even a little bit! 😉 ​
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This one is controversial y’all.

In June 2018, Instagram Stories partnered with Spotify to enable the sharing of short clips of songs directly into a Story.
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That part is is simple enough. But do a Twitter search for “why can’t I share music on Instagram?,” scroll through the endless steam of angry, frustrated or just plain sad users, and you’ll see where the controversy lies.

Because here’s the thing: only personal accounts can share music, not business accounts (more on that in a bit). But really, even that isn’t exactly true! Sometimes business accounts can share music, usually however they can’t. Or that’s my experience anyway.

Why? Because Instagram is a website and there are glitches. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ​
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​Facebook has been extremely invested in video for quite some time. So it is no surprise that Instagram would find ways to allow users to share videos longer than one minute.

In June 2018 they rolled out IGTV, short for Instagram Television (yup) enabling users to share videos ranging from 61 seconds up to ten minutes. Some accounts could go as long as an hour, but in my experience, most are limited to ten minutes.

The IGTV rollout was extremely flawed from the outset and widespread use has been so limited that they actually rolled it off into a standalone app where it could sit quietly and not bother anyone.

You can still watch users IGTVs (two points to anyone who knows who to do so!), but mostly it serves as a tool to let people trying to upload longer videos to be able do so. Of course if you do so, people can watch the first minute of your video in their feed, but then they have to switch over to the IGTV version to continue.

The biggest mistake Instagram made with IGTV bar-none (in my opinion of course) was limiting IGTV search to only apply to the handle of the user who uploaded the piece, and not to the accompanying descriptive text.

I’m clearly a huge social media nerd — when a platform rolls out a new product or feature, I’m going to try it. When IGTV launched, I quickly headed to the search bar and searched for bluegrass (I’m a bluegrass musician and fan). What did I find: content from a bank in Kentucky… and not much else. Because the search term only applied to the name of the sharing accounts, despite the fact that just like with any other post, you could describe the video you were sharing with accompanying text. Hell, you could even use hashtags, but since they were unsearchable, they were completely worthless.

For example, lets say Del McCoury or Punch Brothers upload a video to IGTV, and introduce it as their "new bluegrass track," I still couldn’t find it by searching bluegrass, because their name doesn’t have bluegrass in it. They could even tag it as #bluegrass and still nothing! Pretty silly, don’t you think?!
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And not too long after that, Instagram Stories hit the 500 million daily active user mark. Expect this number to continue rising in the coming years.
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While Instagram didn’t invent the concept of ephemeral content, they have certainly perfected it. This is one feature that I don’t think will be going away anytime soon.
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Stories was Facebook's response to Snapchat. So when TikTok raged onto the scene in the summer of 2020, it was clear that Facebook would have to respond. They initially created a standalone app called Lasso, mimicking many of features of TikTok. But that app was shut down before anyone had really even heard of it. (Honestly, had you heard of it?)

When that didn't work, they decided to stuff the complexity of an entire other social channel directly into Instagram. After all, it worked with Stories - why not try again?!

Thus Reels was born.

Reels hasn't seen the same kind of fast usership growth as Stories, mostly because it's more complicated to use than Stories and doesn't do as good a job at actually solving a problem for users.

Stories enabled users to worry less about creating a perfect take before sharing a picture or video. Reels... kinda does the opposite. Videos have to be a very specific amount of time (15 or 30 seconds) and have to tell an entire story in a way that Stories didn't require. Stories can run together to show the happening of an evening or a campaign. Reels standalone and have to start and conclude, while ensuring something interesting happens in a very short and concrete amount of time. 

There's clearly an appetite for creating and consuming such content (see: the explosive growth of TikTok!) but it doesn't naturally compute than everyone on Instagram is going to take the time or effort to join in on the content creation.

That said in November of 2020, Instagram rolled out a massive redesign of the app, placing Reels front and center (it literally took the place of the button that, since day one, was used to create a post!). So clearly Instagram is invested in its success.

Side note: this redesign also added a shopping tab, as Instagram continues to invest in the ecommerce side of social.

Whether or not Reels can ever claim the kind of standalone success as Stories is to be determined, but it's clear that Instagram will continue to invest heavily in this internal spinoff. And as long as the political future of TikTok continues to remain murky, that decision from Zuck and co. makes sense.

The above list of product rollouts and milestones is far from exhaustive. Very far in fact!

Despite Instagram retaining its simplicity year after year, it is actually constantly changing.

If I wanted to make this post twice as long, I easily could have done so! But for your sake and mine, I’m not going to do that.

That said, here are a few highlights we didn’t cover, but that are worth noting.

February 2016: Since Instagram has always been a mobile-first platform, it has bothered people to no end that you couldn’t login to more than one account at a time. Back at the beginning, if you wanted to share content from more than one account, you had to logout of one and login to the other to do so. In 2016, they added the option to be logged into five accounts at once (but no more). This was a much appreciated feature for anyone who works in social media!

March 2016: Instagram switches its feed from chronological, where you see whatever was posted most recently by anyone you follow, to algorithmic, where Instagram determines what content you see and in what order, based on what they think you will like.

May 2016: Instagram introduced a business account, which looks and feels identical to a regular account but comes with a few extra tools, the most important being analytics!

July 2016: They began to enable the ability to better moderate comments on your threads.

January 2018: Instagram added an “Archive,” storing all of your Stories even after they have disappeared. They are only visible to you, unless you have them shared in a Highlight. But with the Archive, you can go back and add old Stories to Archives, even if they’ve already disappeared from your profile.

September 2018: Instagram’s founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, resigned from the company. Notice how closely this follows the rollout of IGTV. Wonder if they’re related? #JustSaying

October 2019: Instagram removed the “Following” activity tab, which let you see the activity of the people you were following, breaking the hearts of exes and creeps everywhere!

This post could go on and on. But we’ll stop here.

What have been your favorite features Instagram has rolled out over the years? Are there any you wish they would retire from the platform?

Have their been any changes that you think should have been on this list but weren’t? Share them in the comments or hit me up on social.

In case it’s not obvious, I never get tired of talking about this stuff!

I hope this post was as helpful for you to read as it was for me to write.

If you enjoyed it, connect with me on Instagram (@jlemonsk). I regularly share platform updates, tricks, tips, hacks and the like. As well as the occasional pictures of my kids and my cat. (You know, all the good stuff!).

See you there.
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I provide private lessons to businesses, campaigns, nonprofits, solopreneurs, bands... anyone who wants to get more out of this powerful platform.

One of my favorite podcasts, Reply All, just did a whole episode trying to track down something that wasn't showing up on Google. If they had remembered that Facebook, while first and foremost is a social media channel, is also a search engine, they could have saved themselves a whole lot of time and energy.

The Facebook search bar is more powerful than you probably realize. In this episode of Step Up Your Social we'll walk through some of the power lurking right at your fingertips.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!
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Drop us a line or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

Want to listen to the recreated version of the song? Or the original one? You can hear both in Reply All episode #158 The Case of the Missing Hit. 

Or scroll down and listen to them both below. 
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​​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

\Do you listen to Reply All? It’s an awesome podcast about living in the age of the internet. Or something like that. If you don’t listen already, you should. It’s one of my favorites for sure.

Last week, they dropped an episode called “The Case Of The Missing Hit.” In it, PJ, one of their two hosts, goes on a truly epic search — and I mean epic in its literal meaning — to find a song that was big enough to be played on the radio internationally in the 90s, but somehow had [virtually] no presence on Google.

The story starts simply enough: A man named Tyler reached out to PJ for help. He could hear this song in his head, but he   couldn’t find it on Google, even though he remembered many of the lyrics. It’s a weird concept in today’s age, where we can find virtually anything online. And yet the song was nowhere to be found… with one weird exception. Years ago, a guy who lives in Trinidad and Tobago had asked about it in an online message board, referencing several of the same lyrics that Tyler remembered. But of course, he too, was trying to track down the song.

This proved that Tyler hadn’t made it up, but it also didn’t help PJ solve the case of the missing hit.

To solve the case, PJ did what any normal person with a budget and an obsession does: he helped Tyler recreate the song in its entirety from memory. Tyler took a song he hadn’t heard in more than 20 years and he coaxed it out of a group of session musicians. PJ then took that recording and talked to… well everyone!

He spoke with numerous music critics from Rolling Stone, producers, radio show hosts from the era, even the lead singer of the Bare Naked Ladies, as the song in question had a very BNL type feel too it.

Google failed them, so PJ took his query to the world. And in the end, all this time, energy and effort amounted to… nothing. Everyone he spoke with had a great idea about how to try to solve the problem. Every great idea took PJ down another rabbit hole. And every rabbit hole ended as unceremoniously as it had started with, “sorry, I just don’t know.”

Then something the Trinidad and Tobago guy had said in his original post sparked something in PJ and he plugged a few lines of the song into Facebook’s search bar. Immediately, not only did he find the song… he found the songwriter who had written it in the first place.

So much time and energy and effort could have been avoided if PJ (or Tyler for that matter) had remembered that while Facebook is first and foremost a social media platform, like virtually every other social media platform you know and love, it’s also part-search engine.

So let’s talk about a few other things the Facebook search bar — that simple little bar right at the top of your account — can do, that you might not have realized:

First things first, type something — anything — into the bar on desktop, and you’ll be brought to a search page. From there, you have a slew of filtering options both on the top of the screen and on the lefthand side.

On the top of the screen, you can choose to only see posts, people, photos, videos, market place, pages, groups, apps, events and links. So the next time you’re trying to find a Facebook Page and you can’t quite remember what it’s called, instead of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, try filtering instead.

On the lefthand side of the screen, you have a whole other bunch of options. You can opt to see posts from anyone, or only yourself, your friends, your groups or pages, or only content shared publicly. You can even choose a source, to see if a friend, group or page has talked about an issue you care about.

Want to see all posts? Of course you can do that. But you can also limit your search to only posts you’ve already seen. Which could come in super handy if you’re looking for something you saw, but can’t remember where.

You can limit your search to only show content tagged in certain locations or posted in a certain year — or even in a certain month of a certain year!

So yeah, right off the bat, you can see that while Facebook might not be Google, there’s more to its search then simply keywords and scrolling.

Now let’s get into some of the less obvious things you can do with Facebook search:

Once upon a time there was an easy way to see which of your friends lived in which city. Then Facebook got rid of that helpful  feature. But good news, they replaced it (they just forgot to tell anyone). Looking for friends in a particular city or state? Just type in “my friends in [wherever]” and Facebook will show you a list.

Looking for a bar, a pizza place, or a spot to get your oil changed? Type in “pizza places near me” and Facebook will show you a list, with a map. Just like Yelp, but without ever leaving Facebook.

Want to know if your friends liked the pizza place you are considering? On the top menu bar, head over to places. On the lefthand side, select “visited by friends.” You can also filter by “open now” and  price!

Want to know which events your friends are going to (or should we say so-called friends, since they’re apparently going out without you!)? Type in a keyword. On the top menu, go to events. On the lefthand side menu, go to “popular with friends.” You can also search for events based on location and date, to find things to do today, tomorrow, this week, this weekend or next week.

While their Boolean search isn’t as powerful as Google, you can employ it to some degree. If you don’t know Boolean by name you might know it in practice. Boolean search is a method of search that lets you filter or exclude terms by using all caps AND, NOT and ORs. So type   “social media” AND “Madison, WI” into Facebook (or Google) and you’ll only get content back that mentions both. Switch AND with OR and you’ll find content mentioning either. Go with NOT and you’ll find content mentioning the first term but not the second one. This can be pretty helpful when trying to narrow your search.

Now it is worth mentioning that while Facebook search is powerful, it’s far less powerful than it used to be. Google “Facebook search bar tricks” and you’ll find tons of articles telling you about a bunch of features you can use. But alas, Facebook killed a lot of them off when they did away with their Graph Search. This feature let you see which of your friends liked which pages, and which posts had been liked by a specific person. Guess it was all just a bit too invasive for a company so worried about your privacy. #LOL

But there’s still plenty you can do with the Facebook search bar.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!

Drop us a line at stepupyoursocial.com or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

In the meantime, don’t get stuck like Tyler and PJ. Start appreciating the power of Facebook search today!

PS: want to hear the song PJ and Tyler recreated, as well as the original? I’ll have links to them both at stepupyoursocial.com.
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Facebook loves video and really wants you to share videos to the platform. When you do so, they reward you with views. But here’s a scary statistic: around 85% of Facebook video is watched… without sound. So what are you to do? Hone in on your acting skills? Stockpile posters and write out the accompanying text? I won’t tell you NOT to do either of those. But there’s a far simpler option available to you built right into Facebook.

Once you've added your video to Facebook, but before you've posted it, you’ll see a menu on the right side of your post. (This only works on your computer, not on mobile.) You’ll see an option to replace your thumbnail. You can either select another moment from the video or upload something you created. In other word, good news: you'll never again have to start off you video with an awkward open-mouth shot. Then below that, you’ll have the option to add subtitles and captions. Select that, pick your language, and Facebook will auto-create subtitles for your video. Assuming your video isn’t too long, it should only take a few moments for them to do so. Once they've been created, you can go through and edit them to make sure they are perfect. Then you can add them to your video and voila, instead of speaking to the 15% of your audience who DO listen with the sound on, now you can now speak to all 100% of them.

It’s worth mentioning this also works with live videos. But only after the fact. Once your video has been posted to your page, click the top right icon to edit it and you’ll get the same option to customize your thumbnail and to create subtitles.

So that’s one free digital tool you should DEFINITELY be using, but probably aren’t.

In this episode, I’m going to run through a bunch more. Let’s dig in.

Let me clarify that, per the title of the episode, every tool I am mentioning today is free. But it’s worth noting that many of them have premium versions you can pay for. But not one of these awesome digital tools requires a credit card to start using.

So let’s get into some more free tools you should be using.

In previous episodes of Step Up Your Social, we’ve covered Google Alerts, Facebook Pages to Watch (both in episode 10) and Twitter lists (in episode 2). Those are three killer, free listening tools. Let’s add one more to the list.

Feedly. Feedly is an RSS tool. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.) Instead of having to jump all over the internet, looking at countless news sources and blogs, you can create a free Feedly account and then subscribe to as many publications as you want. You can bundle your publishers by category and then, whenever you are looking to catch up with the news — or importantly, wherever you know you need to share something on social but are not sure what — you can head to Feedly and see all the content that every publication or blog you follow has posted. You can even break down content by category, so you can just see what’s going on in the world of Facebook, or email marketing, or minor league baseball or whatever. Instead of searching the internet for relevant news, use Feedly to create a pipeline to bring all that relevant news directly to you.

Next up, let’s look at two powerful apps owned by Instagram.

There are no shortage of free photo and video apps or tools in the app store. But these two are owned by Instagram, so you know they must be good.

The first is called Layout, and it lets you take multiple pictures and lay them out as you want. You can easily drag and drop to switch pics or to change the size of one image or another. It's very easy to use.

The second is called Hyperlapse. I really love this one. It’s just a simple camera app, but it lets you create videos that can be sped up as desired. You have to take the video in the app for it to work, but once you’re done filming, you can speed up the video from 2x up to 12x speed. So let’s say you stick your phone in a tripod and film you and your team setting up for an event. You can take that footage, speed it up by a factor of 12 and suddenly your 15 minute set-up can be viewed in under a minute. Very powerful storytelling tool for the right situation! Quick caveat: for obvious reasons, it will record video without sound. If you want, you can add sound in after the fact. But the app will not capture any audio accompanying your video.

I don’t refer to many digital tools as magic, but this next one really kinda is. It’s called Remove.bg (as in remove background). And that’s exactly what it does. Caveat: it only works for people, not things.

You can use this tool on your computer or phone by visiting Remove.bg. Upload a photo and then tell it to remove background. It will take about 4 seconds and then, just like that, you'll have the person (or people) in your photo captured against a transparent background. In my experience, they aren’t 100% accurate. They’re only about… 97% or so. Not bad for a free tool and four seconds! You can then erase anything they missed or add back anything you want to keep.

Then you can export that file and upload it somewhere else to edit it, or just add a background to it right through their site. You can upload your own background files, or select from their photo library.

Anyone with any Photoshop experience can do this same thing. But not as quickly as remove.bg. And probably not for free!

Speaking of graphic design, there are a million free tools out there that will help you design better graphics, add logos to your pictures and do plenty of other basic graphic design work without having to invest years into learning Photoshop. But Canva was the originator of the field and they are still the go to for all my “graphic designs for dummies” needs.

They're free to use, but they do offer a premium version that adds perks like letting you store your brand’s colors and create more advanced file storage systems. You should also know that despite having an endless amount of pictures, icons and pre-made templates to pull from, a bunch are free but many are not. So be aware that you aren’t building something you love using a paid pic or icon, unless you are prepared to pull out your credit card. That said, most assets can be bought for just $1, so you don’t have to worry about breaking your budget.

Another great thing about Canva is that it's all web based. So you can login on your computer, start a design. Then head to your Canva app and keep working on the go.

It’s also worth noting that Canva.org offers free premium options for nonprofits.

And since we’re talking about stock photos, my go to stock photo source these days is Unsplash. You can search the site by keyword, find beautiful, high quality photos that you can then use for free. They request, but don’t require, giving credit to the photographer.

I will add that I’m not a lawyer and there are some fine print things that might affect you and your brand. If you have a lawyer, ask them to vet the language per your needs. If you don’t, head to Google and get lots of different takes on what you can and what you can’t do with “free” stock images.

I’m going to close my list with two quick writing assistance tools. The first is Grammarly, a free extension you can add to your browser (and your phone as well, though I’ve stuck with just using it on my computer). It’s essentially spellcheck for everything you do online. It won’t make you a better writer per se, but it will help ensure you don’t embarrass yourself with typos, missing commas or by using the wrong your.

The second one is called Hemingway App. This one may actually make you a better writer.

Copy and paste your text into Hemingway App and it will flag sentences that are hard to read, words that you can simplify, overuse of the passive voice and anything else keeping you from writing more like Ernest Hemingway.

So that’s my list. I’d love to hear any tools that you use that I didn’t include. Share them in the comments, hit me up on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn at Reverbal Communications or tweet at me using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.

As always, if this was helpful to you, I’d really appreciate a review wherever you stream podcasts. It will only take you a moment and will go a long way towards helping us reach a larger audience.

​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Last week, a “YouTube Star” named Drew Gooden tweeted “Excuse me @Delta but this is outrageous. I just got sucked through the toilet hole in one of your aircrafts and am now hurtling through the sky, can I get my money back? This never happens on Southwest.”

Obviously this is a ridiculous tweet, intended for comedic purposes. But the person handling customer service for Delta that day, who was clearly in dire need of a few pots of coffee, apparently didn’t read beyond the first line before responding “Hello Drew, I am sorry to learn of this, can you provide more detail to what occurred. HBB.” ​

Drew promptly responded “got sucked through toilet hole.”

​Let’s take a step back and think about how this happened.

Now what the airlines lack in legroom, they more than make up for in social media budgets. Who amongst hasn’t used social media to reach out to an airline to complain about something, only to be met with a pseudo-personalized response — replete with an employee’s first name or initials — only to be informed they can’t actually help us with our problem but that they hope we have a nice flight (even though we’re writing to ask why our flight has been delayed 18 hours, with no end in sight!).

But still, they are paying people to monitor their channels, and provide quick responses to any and every query sent their way, including paying HBB to respond to Drew when he complains about being sucked out of one of their toilet holes.

What’s the lesson from this ridiculous exchange: social listening is good. But only, if you are actually hearing what your audience is saying.

Now this podcast exists to share quick, actionable tips to help you step up your social. In this episode, we’re going to look at 6 more times the airlines blew it on social media, and talk about what we can learn from their collective mistakes. Let’s let their fails become our best practices.

So without further ado:

Social Fail Number 2: The lesson here is the same as in the previous example, but it’s too good not to also share.

When American Airlines merged with US Airways, they created the world’s largest airline. Twitter user Mark Murphy tweeted his congrats. And this new mega-airline was quick to reply, thanking him for his support.

The problem: Mark’s congratulatory tweet actually read: “Congrats to @americanair and @usairways on creating the largest, shittiest airline in the world.”

So yeah, the airline was listening, but they weren’t actually hearing.

Social Fail Number 3: During the 2014 World Cup, the US was playing Ghana. When the US men’s team scored their second (game-winning) goal, Delta was excited to share the news with its fans. Smart. Delta serves an international audience of people who like to travel. Why wouldn’t they want to show their audience that they are in on the fun?

To represent the US, they used an image of the Statue of Liberty. To represent Ghana, they used an image of a giraffe. The problem? There are no giraffes in Ghana.

What can we learn from this mistake? Don’t make assumptions. Five minutes on Wikipedia could have prevented years of embarrassment for a brand that was trying to show they were with it, and instead showed how little they understood the world they were trying to connect.​

Social Fail Number 4: This one isn’t actually from an airline. It’s from an airport. But it still made our list. 
​
In 2013, Luton Airport in London posted a photo of a recent incident from Chicago in which a plane had skidded of a runway, promising that “Because we are such a super airport… this is what we prevent you from when it snows… Weeeee :)” 

Let’s start with the fact that this is just bad writing. But convulsion aside, the real problem with this post is that they were using a plane crash as a punchline, despite the fact that a six year old boy had died in the incident.

Even if your brand’s voice is bold and irreverent, know when it’s appropriate to make jokes about incidents involving dead kids? Umm, let’s go with never. Sound good? 

For Social Fail Number 5: let’s start with the lesson and then move backwards. Contests and hashtags can be great ways to drum up User Generated Content and to encourage your audience to sing your praises to their communities. But they aren’t magic, and if you are struggling with a PR crisis, they can often create more harm than good.

This is a lesson that Qantas Airways learned the hard way.

Qantas wanted to drum up some online excitement for their brand, so they decided to give away a first class gift package by having people tell them about their “dream luxury inflight experience” using the hashtag #QantasLuxury.
The responses came streaming in. But they weren’t what Qantas had in mind.

Here are just a few examples:

• Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire
•  #QantasLuxury is a massive executive bonus while your workers starve and your former customers choke
• Flights that leave on schedule because Management doesn’t arbitrarily shut down the airline #QantasLuxury
• #qantasluxury having a skybed so “superior in its class” you have to be under 5 foot to be able to use it with your legs straight.
• #qantasluxury – is not being told you can apply for refund online & finding out they only refund via a phone # that no one answers for 4hrs
  
  

So yeah, you get the idea.

This is not the story that Qantas wanted their audience to share with their networks. But even an intern should have foreseen that you can’t use a hashtag to solve a PR problem. A hashtag is offering the floor to your community. And if you think their stories MIGHT be more problematic than positive, maybe find another outreach approach.

Social Fail Number 6 was a famous one — United Airlines overbooked a flight and instead of raising the incentives until someone volunteered to leave the plane, they opted instead to violently drag a man — a doctor in fact — off of their plane. Someone shot a video of the brutal altercation and of course it went viral.
So I guess the lesson here is don’t be a jerk to your customers. But actually, I’m including this one on the list for a different reason. 

As bad as the video was — and it was BAD — their real social media fail came from their response.

Bad things happen. An overzealous security guard or a stressed out flight attendant made a mistake and let their emotions get the better of them. Give it time and enough volume, it’s going to happen.

But when you inevitably make your apology, you better make it good. Needless to say, United blew that as well, or this issue wouldn’t have made today’s list.

A United exec put out a statement that essentially blamed the passenger, even though it was United who oversold the flight in the first place.

Additional apologies followed but it’s safe to say that this issue will stick with their brand for some time to come. 

The lesson: if you are going to issue an apology, make it right the first time!

Which brings us to Social Fail Number 7, the final mistake on our list. This one is a doozy, and it’s — to put it mildly — NSFW (Not Suitable For Work).

In April, 2014, a Twitter user, Elle, tweeted her frustration with US Airways regarding an issue with her flight. 

Five hours later, US Airways responded to let her know they were sorry. 
Elle didn’t accept their apology. “Yeah, you seem so very sorry. So sorry, in fact, that you couldn’t be bothered to address my other tweets.”

US Airways responded with the following: “We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail it here for review and follow-up.”

Accompanying this tweet was almost definitely the most explicit, shocking and inappropriate image every tweeted out by a Fortune 500 company, if not by any company ever!

It’s so NSFW I won’t even describe it here, other than to say it involved a toy airplane. 

The tweet was deleted within an hour, but it is still very much lives on via screenshots all over the internet (even though I kinda wish it didn’t). 

So here’s the lesson: don’t put anything on the internet, whether in a DM, a secret Facebook group or certainly not in response to a customer, if you aren’t prepared to see it quoted or screenshot across the internet.

Also, trust the people you have helping you manage your social accounts. Like, really. 

Special thanks to Tre Temperilli for providing research assistance for this episode.

If you are enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving it a review wherever you stream podcasts. It will only take you a moment and can go a long way towards helping grow our audience.
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Thank you and be smart out there.

​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

There are three primary reasons you should be blogging to grow your brand:
1) It's great for your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
2) It positions you as an expert in your field
3) It creates endless bridges between your social media and your website

In this episode of #StepUpYourSocial, we dig into all three of these reasons, as well as how to approach creating content, the difference between timely and evergreen content... and a whole lot more!

Tune in today right here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

A supporter spotlight is an opportunity for you to shine a light on one of your supporters and talk about how great they are. It can be a blog or a Facebook post, a short video on Instagram or whatever else makes sense for your brand. The primary thing is that you are shouting someone important to your brand.

And support spotlights are win-win-win.

In this episode, we'll cover the what, the how and the why. Listen now below, or wherever you stream podcasts.

​​​​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Supporter spotlights are win-win-win. ​

Before we delve into our 3 wins, let’s real quick define the term “supporter.”

A supporter isn’t someone who buys your products — it’s someone who waits in line to be the first one to buy your product. Or regularly tweets or posts about themselves using your product.

It’s not the person who donates to your organization, but the person who calls on all their friends to do the same.

It’s not the person who comes to your event. But the person who shows up early and stays late to help set-up and tear-down.

Put shortly — your supporters are the people without whom your brand couldn’t exist.

A supporter spotlight is quite simply an opportunity for you to shine a light on one of your supporters and talk about how great they are. It can be a blog or a Facebook post, a short video on Instagram or whatever else makes sense for your brand. The primary thing is that you are shouting someone important to your brand.

So that’s the what. Now let’s talk about the why and breakdown the 3 wins involved in a supporter spotlight.

Win 1 — you are showing the world that your company or organization is bigger than just you and your paid staff.

There are people — not motivated by a paycheck — who care about you, your product or your mission.

Introduce these people to your audience. In the process you’ll inspire other members of your audience to want to dig deeper and learn more about what makes you, your product or your service so special. I mean after all, someone got up at 3am to buy that thing you sell. It must be pretty amazing!

Win 2 — This one is the most obvious. A supporter spotlight is literally a digital thank you. If your supporters are awesome, and treat you right, why wouldn’t you want to give them a shoutout for being so great.

Win 3 — This is the one that can really help you move the needle.

When you write up your supporter spotlight — you want to make it not just about how great your supporter is generally. You want to make it about why your supporter loves your brand the way they do.

Let’s say you’re a nonprofit that focuses on planting trees and gardens in urban areas. There are a lot of reasons someone might be excited about your work. Maybe it’s the after school programs you run. Maybe it’s the environmental component of your work. Maybe it’s the fact that you are beautifying the city by turning brown lots into community gardens.

When you write up your post thanking your support for being so great — clarify what it is that he or she loves about your work. And be specific. Because invariably, that person is going to share your supporter shoutout with his or her own audience. And guess what — if that person loves that you have an after school program for kids — that person probably has a lot of friends in their network that also have kids. And those people MAY have heard of you, but now you are providing this supporter an opportunity to introduce you and your brand directly to his or her friends and family… in your own words! You are talking about how great you are, but from the perspective of someone who already loves you and your work!

When I served as the digital director on a governor’s race, we did 45 such supporter spotlights throughout the final 30 days of the campaign. In every one, we introduced the supporter we were spotlighting, talked about where they lived and what their role was in the campaign. Then we talked about what got them excited about the candidate.

If they were a teacher, and liked that the candidate had a great education policy, we talked about that. If they were a nurse, and they were excited about the candidate’s healthcare plan, we talked about that. If they were in a union, and liked the candidate’s union stance, that was the focus of the post.

So when we shared our supporter spotlight, we were showing the world that the campaign was bigger than simply the candidate and his staff (win 1). We were thanking the people who had been working tirelessly to help get us to election day (win 2). And we were talking about why our supporters was so passionate about the candidate in a way that we knew would resonate with their own personal communities (win 3).

We knew that the teacher would have lots of teacher friends, the nurse lots of nurse friends, the union member… you get the idea. So when they invariably shared our spotlight, that allowed us to reach directly out to their friends and networks, talking about how great we were on an issue that we already knew was near and dear to their heart.

Win. Win. Win.

So find the people who help keep your brand going and thank them. It’s the least you can do! And you’ll probably grow your brand in the process!

Instagram Stories just keep getting more popular. Over 500 million people now use them every... single... day!

And their functionality keeps growing as well.

In this episode of #StepUpYourSocial, we cover ten tips, tricks, hacks and strategies that you should be using to take your Instagram Story game to the next level.

We cover:

• Growing your reach by tagging location, hashtags and other accounts
• Using Stories to create and foster User Generated Content
• Using stickers to directly engage your audience
• Increasing a post's reach by sharing it to your Stories
• Creating solid and transparent overlays 
• Linking your Story to additional content
• Creating drop shadow text
• Getting your stickers, gifs or text to move along with your video
• And a whole lot more!
  ​

Are there any tricks or hacks you like that we didn't cover?
We want to hear them!

Share them in the comments, hit us up on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, or share them online them using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.

​​​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

In episode 3, we  did a “deep dive into instagram stories.” But stories keep on growing, both in their popularity and in their functionality. So today we’re going to cover some fun tricks and hacks to take your Instagram stories to the next level.​

If you’re not already posting stories on a regular basis, head back to episode 3 and get caught up on what they are and why and how you should be using them.

And now let’s dig in!
1) Use the location sticker to say where you are. You can be super specific — I’m at the WI capitol. You can be a bit vague — I’m in Madison, WI. Or you can be super vague — I’m in WI.

There are 2 reasons to use location stickers: first, it helps people know where you are. And 2) and this is the important one, it could dramatically increase your story’s reach. There’s no surefire way to get one of your stories added to a public story — which will definitely increase your reach  — but not tagging your location guarantees that you WON’T be added to the public location’s story.

And here’s something cool: Instagram is smart enough to know that the WI Capitol is in Madison and that Madison is in WI. So it’s possible you’ll wind up in the public stories for all 3 of those places. Which is the main reason why specific location tagging is better than general location tagging. But any location tagging is better than none!

Two more notes on this — one) not every story should be tagged by location. If you’re sharing a screenshot of one of your tweets, or posting a Game of Thrones meme that got you laughing, it’s okay to skip the location. And 2 — and this one’s a big one — you don’t actually have to be at a location to tag yourself there. Now of course I’m not telling you to lie to your audience. But if you took a bunch of pictures at an event last night and we’re too busy to share stories in real time, you can post them the next day, and tag the location after the fact. Just search for the location within the search bar, select it, and voila. You’re tagged.

You can then move that sticker around, make it bigger or smaller, or click it to get different color formatting to better fit the feel of your story.

2) There’s a location sticker. There’s also a hashtag sticker. Use it! Just like you might be added to a public location’s story, thus increasing your story’s reach, using a hashtag sets you up to potentially be added to a public hashtag’s story.

Now on a general Instagram post, you can use up to 30 hashtags. Stories won’t let you go that far, but it will allow you to use up to 10 hashtags. The more hashtags you use, the better chance you have of getting added to that public story.

Now it will only let you use the hashtag sticker once in a story. But if it makes sense for you to add more, just pop on over to your text and start typing our relevant hashtags.

IF you are going to do this — and of course you don’t have to go for 10 in every post, consider stacking and then hiding them, so that it doesn’t make your story look gaudy. To do that, create each hashtag as a new piece of text, meaning that instead of just hitting space between tags, you hit done after each one, and then start new text for tag number 2 and so on. Then you can stack them, literally put them all on top of each other. Which will look awful. But fear not, head back to your stickers and find yourself a sticker or a gif to stick on top. Then no one will see them except instagram… which is the only one who matters here!

3) There’s a location and a hashtag sticker. There’s also a mention sticker. This lets you tag someone in your picture, or any relevant public account you want. This one won’t help you get into any public stories, but it will give a public shoutout to the account you are tagging, and just as important, it will send a notification to that account that you have tagged them in a story.

As I always say — don’t talk about anyone on the internet if you wouldn’t want them to know. And talking about them without tagging them is like talking to them on the phone without first dialing their number. Without it, they might accidentally come your post, but a tag all but ensures they see it!

4) Another reason to tag someone is that when you do, they then get the option to share your story with their followers. So you give them a shoutout, and then they help you reach new audiences. win-win!

Along with hoping your community shares your posts, definitely consider sharing relevant and interesting stories that tag you. User generated content can be an amazing way to tell your brand’s story.

And, something cool about sharing other people’s stories — it’s more like a quote tweet than a retweet. Meaning you don’t just have to share their story as is. You essentially are sharing their story as a sticker, meaning you can add your own location, mention and hashtag stickers to it, gifs, text and more.

The ability to share stories changed the whole concept of instagram’s power of telling stories in real time. Take advantage of this tool, as makes sense for you and your brand.

5) If you haven’t explored the loads of fun stickers available to you, you are missing out! Along with the ones we’ve already covered, and gifs (which I love!), there are also some really cool engagement stickers built right into the platform.

You can solicit questions from your audience (which you can then answer in follow up stories), take polls, quiz your audience… there’s even a countdown clock available to you if you have an exciting event taking place and want to build some excitement.

6) Did you know that you can add any Instagram post, your own or anyone else’s, to your stories? To do so is extremely simple — at the bottom of the post, next to the heart and comment icons, there’s a little paper airplane. Click it and you’ll see the option to “add to story.” Click that and whatever you were looking at will appear as a sticker in your story. When I say “whatever you were looking at,” what I mean is that if it was an album, you can only add one image, and if it’s a video, you will only be adding a screenshot of the thumbnail associated with the video.

But once you have the image in your story, you can move it around, make it bigger or smaller and add all of the stickers, gifs and text you want. And if you click on the actual post, it will change the formatting from the clean image with a tag of who posted it, to an image that includes the handle and part of the post’s original text.

Here’s the coolest hack for this though — go to your gif library and search “tap here.” You’ll have loads of options — pick one you like. Add your tap here sticker to your story. When someone clicks it, they’ll get a seemingly magic option to visit the original post. Here’s the thing — they would get that option whether or not you point them to tap there. Most folks just don’t realize it. So the built-in call-to-action makes it super easy to drive people from your story to your original post (or anyone else’s). It a big part of why more and more accounts are creating stories from their posts. It’s a second audience you can engage around the same content, and you can potentially drive people back to the original. I don’t know that you should do this for every post, but maybe the one’s you are particularly excited about.

7) When I am building a new story that’s not based on a picture, I’ll sometimes just snap a photo while covering the camera. So I get a black background. Which works fine. But if you want a different color background, there’s actually a really easy way to create one.

Take a picture — of whatever’s in front of you — and then click the pen tool. Select the first pen, pick your color of choice on the bottom and then hold your finger down on the screen. The whole background will become that color.

If you want to add a transparent color over top of one of your pictures, you can do that too. Instead of selecting the first pen, select the second one, which looks more like a marker. Choose your color, hold down and you get a transparent overlay over top of your picture.

Want to get really clever with either of these — create your solid or transparent color over top of a picture, and then use the eraser to remove color from the selected areas. That can create a very cool effect!

8) If you have 10k followers, you can link a story to an external link. Which is a very powerful tool, but one that not a lot of users actually have access to.

So for those of you with less than 10,000 followers, you can’t link to an external source. But you do have one option for linking your story — you can link it to an IGTV video that you have posted previously.

IGTV, short for Instagram TV, allows you to post longer videos then you can post within Instagram proper. In Instagram, you are limited to one minute videos. But with IGTV, you can go up to 10 minutes, and some bigger accounts can even go up to an hour.

It can be a great way to repurpose videos that you created elsewhere but couldn’t post to Instagram because they were too long.

And once you have posted those longer videos, you can link directly to them through a story. To do so, simply click the link icon at the top of your story. You will then be able to select from any of your pre-published videos in IGTV. Then anyone seeing your story can swipe up and get to your IGTV video.

Consider searching through the gifs library for one that creates a call to action to swipe up to help your audience realize that your story is intended to take them somewhere.

9) Here’s a fun hack — while Instagram offers a handful of cool fonts, they don’t provide many options in terms of formatting your text. But want to create a drop shadow effect? Doing so is really easy! Create your text, ideally not changing the size at all (you can change color and placement, but if you change size you are going to struggle to get the drop shadow text to match perfectly). Once you have it exactly how you want it, create it again with a different color. Then place one of the texts on top of the other, but just slightly off, enough to create your own… wait for it… drop shadow.

Want to see an example of this in action. Head over to my Instagram account — I’m @jlemonsk — and then check out my story highlight titled IG updates. Whenever I create a story about a new Instagram feature, hack or strategy, I add it to that highlight. Scroll through and you’ll find one that shows this drop shadow hack in action.

10) I saved this next one for last because it is just so freaking awesome! Want to add a sticker, text or a gif to a video and have it follow along with the video, rather than just remaining static in one spot? Doing so is actually quite easy! Create a video story (either take a new video in the app, or add in a video that’s already on your phone). Then select the sticker or gif you want, or type in the text. Now, while the video is playing in the background, hold your finger down on the sticker or text.

You’ll then get a scrollbar at the bottom of the screen. That scrollbar will let you move through the video at your own speed. Get to a spot that works for you and then move and/or resize the sticker until you have it where you want it. Then hit pin. Assuming your video isn’t too complicated for Instagram to handle, it should paste your sticker or text onto that spot in the video and then let it follow along throughout the duration of the video.

So for example, instead of your train sticker just sitting in the top corner of your video, you can pin it to the front of the train and as the train moves through your video, your sticker will move through with it.

Pretty cool, right?

Your turn — what are some of your favorite strategies, tricks or hacks that you have been using to step up your Instagram story game? I want to hear about them. Hit me up on Instagram (again, I’m @jlemonsk), or on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn where I’m Reverbal Communications. Or share it online using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.

And if you tag me in your stories, you better believe I’ll gonna share it! So hit me up!

Now what are you waiting for. Get out there and step up your story game!

Ready to become an Instagram Champion? I provide private lessons to businesses, campaigns, nonprofits, solopreneurs, bands... anyone who wants to get more out of this powerful platform.

Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well, so that you could grow your own business accordingly?

Facebook has a free feature, available to all Facebook Brand pages, that might as well be a magic wand. Yet so few brands are taking advantage of this simple, powerful and important feature.

So let’s dig into Facebook’s “Pages To Watch.”

Afterward, we’ll cover some other helpful and free tools you should be using to keep tabs on your competitors across the internet, including mailing lists, other social channels and the almighty Google Alerts.

​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well, so that you could grow your own business accordingly? Facebook has a free feature, available to all Facebook Brand pages, that might as well be a magic wand. Yet so few brands are taking advantage of this simple, powerful and important feature. So let’s dig in to Facebook’s “Pages To Watch.” Afterwards, we’ll cover some other helpful and free tools you should be using to keep tabs on your competitors across the internet. But first up: Pages to Watch.

To access this great feature, go to your brand’s Facebook page. At the top, you will see a menu bar including the following  items: Page, Inbox, Notifications and then Insights. Click there. If you haven’t been to your insights yet, you are missing out on a ton of valuable information. We’ll do some more deep dives into Facebook Insights down the road. But for now, let’s just stick to this particular tool.

Once you’ve clicked Insights, you’ll be on the “overview” page. Scroll down to the bottom and you should see a section called “pages to watch.”

If you have never been there before, chances are Facebook has auto-populated the section with pages they think you might want to watch. If they guessed right, great. If not, simply hover over the number on the left and you can delete it from your list.

To add new pages, click the option to “add pages.”

Once you have your pages set up, you’ll see some very basic data: the name of the page, it’s total page Likes, the percent it grew from last week, how many times they posted this week and what their engagement this week has been. None of those data points are all that useful. BUT, if you click on the name of any of the pages, something interesting happens.

Facebook opens up a pop-up box and shows you that page’s top content from the past week. Top content in this case means that it had the highest combination of reach and engagement of anything that page posted this past week. And you can scroll down and see all of their content from the week, ordered by how popular it was for their audience.

Quite a feature, right?!

Bear in mind, when you follow a page, they have no way of knowing you are doing so. So if you want to know what is working for your competitors, without having to continuously go back to their page and scroll through their feed, you can just pop on over here every couple of days and easily keep tabs on them.

If you see that several of your competitors are sharing an article or a meme and it is resonating with their audiences… well don’t steal their content. But definitely do be inspired by it!

The content that is working for your competitors will probably also work for you. Follow along, learn, and create your own content accordingly.

And here’s the thing, while of course you should be watching your competitors, don’t limit yourself to them. Follow influencers in your field, relevant journalists or publications, even high value customers if you they are using brand pages.

Figure out who’s success you most want to track, and then spend a few minutes setting up your Facebook Pages to Watch. It will be an amazing tool you can use indefinitely moving forward.

While we’re on the topic of tracking your competitors, influencers, high-value customers and the like, let’s cover a few ways to do so outside of Facebook.

First of all, if the people you want to follow have public mailing lists, sign up! There’s no better way to know what they are excited about, then to see what they are sharing with the people they care about most. It probably goes without saying, but you might not want to use your company or organization’s branded email to sign up for a competitor’s email list. So use your gmail address, or create something new specifically for this purpose. While it might seem weird to be on their list, don’t forget, unless they are limiting sign-up (and this is important: don’t lie in any way to get on their list!) they know that their list is public. And chances are, if you have an   email, they’re on it! As far as influencers and relevant journalists go, you can use your branded email or not. Your call.

In episode two of this podcast, we covered the power and the importance of twitter lists. Twitter lists are a great way to follow relevant accounts. And you can use private lists to do so under-the-radar, even if your brand isn’t using Twitter as an outreach and communications tool. Go back and listen to that episode for more.

There are also plenty of third party tools out there that will track keyword mentions and send you alerts when those keywords pop up online. Some are free, most are not. But one powerful one that is free is google alerts. If you haven’t set up google alerts yet, you should do so immediately.

To do so go to google.com/alerts. Once there you can put in some relevant keywords and let google know that you want to receive email alerts whenever those words are used online. It’s important to know that google alerts don’t track content from social media platforms, so don’t expect to see Facebook or Twitter mentions on there.

But if someone mentions you or your brand in a blog post, or on their website, Google will usually catch it and send you an alert.

And here’s the thing, you can select if you want google to send you an alert as a mention happens, or to instead send you a daily or weekly digest of all mentions. For your brand, you should get those alerts as they happen. Unless people are talking about your brand numerous times a day, you want to know you’ve been mentioned as soon as possible. But if you also want to use them to track competitors, industry keywords, influencers and the like, you might not need them rolling in as they happen and you can opt to receive those alerts as part of a daily or even weekly round-up. The choice is yours.

One other cool thing you can do with google alerts is set them up for high value clients so that if that client gets an award or someone writes a story about them, you can be amongst the first to reach out and congratulate them. Alternately, you can let them know if you find something problematic that they might want to deal with

The tools are out there for you to keep tabs on the internet. The set up is relatively simple and the rewards can be immense.

So I’ll finish this episode with the same question I started it with: Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well? Turns out, you do! You just have to take a moment and set it up.

Warren Buffett is a better writer than you for one simple reason: he knows his audience and he writes directly for them. Are you doing the same?

Don't write your content for "the world," rather write it for an individual. Don't try to make yourself *sound* smart. Try to make your reader *feel* smart.
​
This episode covers some takeaways from Social Media Marketing World 2019 and pulls from a great presentation given by Ann Handley, the author of Everybody Writes.

​​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Last week, I attended Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. Throughout some upcoming episodes, I’ll be sharing a few takeaways from the massive conference, which played host to around 5000 social media and marketing professionals!

But today I want to talk about a presentation I saw by Ann Handley, the author of Everybody Writes.

While her session was called “How to write an email newsletter that people clear their schedules to read,” it could have just as easily been called — it’s time to focus less on the news of newsletter, and more on the letter.

I’m a huge email junky — along with writing email newsletters for my own business and my clients, I also read a lot of emails from brands, journalists, politicians and the like. And I mean a lot. In fact, email has become my primary method for keeping up with the news. I get daily or weekly emails from a ton of journalists and organizations, and let me tell you: there’s a huge difference between an email that was written for me, and one that was written for the world.

And that brings us to our title: Why Warren Buffett is a better writer than you. Warren Buffett is arguably the smartest person alive in his field. He could probably sit down and write his annual report ensuring that you couldn’t understand a word of it. He could use big words, tech jargon and language intended to make him sound smart, rather than to make you become smarter. But he understands that he doesn’t have to prove himself to anyone (at least not in his writing!). He uses his annual letter to convey a message and he wants to ensure that message is accessible to all. To do that, he has a trick. And it’s such a simple trick, you won’t believe it.

Rather than writing his annual letter to his stockholders, en masse, he writes it to his two sisters, Doris and Bertie. Now I’m sure that Doris and Bertie are very smart women. But they aren’t as smart at investing as Warren Buffett — no one is! When I say he writes it to them, I mean literally. He starts his letter “Dear Doris and Bertie.” He removes the line before sending it along, but the DNA of the letter is personal and real. He doesn’t want his sisters to feel dumb — he wants them to feel smart! And he writes accordingly.

Ann Handley talked about this concept at length during her session at social media marketing world and it really resonated with me — because it’s something I’ve recommend to my clients for years.

Along with working with nonprofits and business professionals (as well as solopreneurs, bands, artists, authors and all kids of other brands!) I do a lot of work with candidates and elected politicians. I was doing an audit and a training for a caucus a while back and I realized that a majority of the members of the caucus were regularly tweeting our press releases. No one on Twitter wants to read a press release. NOT EVEN THE PRESS!

I told them that before they sent any further communications, whether it be via Twitter, Facebook, email, anything… they should picture an actual constituent reading their content. Do you think that sweet grandpa you met last month while knocking doors is going to appreciate your press release? He isn’t! Take the message of the release and make it digestable to him. Is he going to know the terminology of laws and budgets and legalese? Maybe. But probably not! So write it for him. The goal is not to make yourself sound smart — the goal is to make your reader feel smart.

I tell all my clients to picture an actual customer before sending a post. I even had someone tell me they loved the idea so much, they wrote a customer’s name down on a post-it note and stuck it to their computer. This way, anytime they write anything, they force themselves to think of this specific person.

Warren Buffett is a better writer than you because he knows his audience — it’s his sisters. Become a better writer simply by focusing on an individual, rather than the world. Because even if your tweet or Facebook post goes viral, or your email gets forwarded on by Oprah and millions of people see it, it’s still being consumed by single individuals, one at a time.

Don’t think of your content as a megaphone, blasting everyone in the area with your knowledge, wisdom and wit. Rather think of it as a telephone, creating a connection between two people. Your writing will be better for it. And your audience will walk away with a much better understanding of your message. And isn’t that kinda the whole point?

Social media can be an overwhelming place, especially when you feel like you don't speak the language.

You’re scrolling through your social channels and you see a bunch of random letters tacked together — TIL, FWIW, IMHO — it can be hard to even know where to start.

So in this episode we cover a list of social media acronyms you should know. This list is neither meant to be exhaustive nor fully up-to-date (since internet language is constantly evolving!).

But in the meantime, you should probably know all of these acronyms if you want to keep up with your customers and your audience.

• AFAIK
• AMA
• BTW
• DM/PM
• FF
• FTW
• FWIW
• HT or H/T
• IIRC
• ICYMI
• IDK
• IRL
• MT
• NSFW
• PT
• ROFL
• SMH
• TBT/FBF
• TL;DR
• TFTF
• TFW
• TIL
• YMMV

Any we missed? Tweet them at us using #StepUpYourSocial. In the meantime, HTH (Hope This Helps!).

NOTE: This list was modified from a previous blog post I wrote which you can find here.

​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Social media can feel like an overwhelming place, especially if you feel like you don’t speak the language. You’re scrolling through your social channels and you see a bunch of random letters tacked together — TIL, FWIW, IMHO — it can be hard to even know where to start.

So I put together a list of social media acronyms you should know. This list is modified from a blog post I wrote a while back which you can find at bit.ly/suys-acronyms. This list is neither meant to be exhaustive nor fully up-to-date (since internet language is constantly evolving!). But in the meantime, you should probably know all of these acronyms if you want to keep up with your customers and your audience.

If you come across any others you aren’t sure about, Google can almost always provide an answer pretty quickly. But if you find yourself stumped, feel free to reach out on Twitter, Facebook (I’m at Reverbal Communications) or drop me an email at suys@reverbalcommunications.com and I’ll see if I can’t offer an assist.

Without further ado, here are some social media acronyms that you should know:

• Let’s start with some obvious, but important ones that seem to confuse even pretty apt social media users: IG - Instagram, FB - Facebook, LI - LinkedIn and YT - YouTube
  
  
• AFAIK — As far as I know
  
  
• AMA — Ask Me Anything

Someone might say: “I work with celebrities. AMA.” The idea is that they know something—or do or have done something—interesting and they are ready to answer your questions. It’s an acronym mostly associated with reddit, but it pops up now and then on other platforms.

• BTW — By the way, also pronounced b-t-dubs
  
  
• DM — Direct Message

Also known as PM, primate message. A DM is more private than a tweet or a post. Although, like everything else on the internet, it’s not completely private! Remember Anthony Weiner and his privates? That story started because he thought he was DMing someone, but he was actually tweeting it. Just as important, even if he had in fact DMed it, someone else would still have had the pic and could have shared it. Which in fact wound up happening to Weiner as well. Here’s a good rule of the thumb: if you don’t want it to be public, don’t write it down (and for the love of god don’t take a picture of it!!!). But if you want to chat a bit more prviately, slide on over to those DMs.

• FF — Follow Friday

If you follow someone you really like, you can give them a nice shoutout using #FF and in the process tell your audience that they should also be following this person. For example: #FF @ReverbalC if you want to #StepUpYourSocial.

• FTW — For The Win
  
  
• FWIW — For What It's Worth
  
  
• HT or H/T — Hat Tip (or Heard Through)

Find something interesting/funny/cool online and want to share it, but don’t want to retweet or share the original post? Instead you can create your own post to share it. But you still want to give credit to the person who shared it with you. Add an HT and then you are giving them their much deserved cred.

• IIRC — If I recall correctly
  
  
• IM(H)O — In My (Humble) Opinion

It’s always important to differentiate between facts and opinions. IMHO.

• ICYMI — In Case You Missed It

This one is important. Some news breaks and you post it online. A few days later, you want to make sure that as many people as possible saw it. Reposting it straight can feel a bit awkward though. But if you add ICYMI, you are letting people know that you are re-flagging the story as noteworthy. A great acronym for re-amplifying stories you think are important.

• IDK — I Don’t Know
  
  
• IRL — In Real Life

As opposed to, you know, on the internet.

• MT — Modified Tweet

This one is Twitter specific, and it’s waaay less relevant today now that Twitter has changed how we quote tweets. But sometimes you will still see it. Essentially, if you want to quote someone else’s tweet, but need to edit it for length or to fix a typo (NOT to change their meaning), you would add MT to your tweet. You are letting people know that you are sharing a modified version of someone else's tweet.

• NSFW — Not Suitable For Work

Be on the look out for this one before clicking on any links at work, or in front of your kids.

• PT — Previous Tweet

Since Twitter added the ability to easily thread tweets, this is another acronym that’s all but irrelevant. But it’s still a good one to understand should you happen to come across it. When someone adds #PT to a tweet, they are letting you know that their current tweet is referring to their previous one.

• ROFL — Rolling On the Floor Laughing

A step up (or is it down?) from LOL (which of course is Laughing Out Loud).

• RT — Retweet
  
  
• SMH — Shaking My Head

Disappointment of the briefest variety.

• TBT — Throwback Thursday

Share a pic of yourself (or someone/something else) from back in the day on any Thursday and tag it #TBT and you have just joined in on Throwback Thursday. It’s a popular form of social media nostalgia. There's also #FBF (Flash Back Friday). Same idea, different day.

• TL;DR — Too Long; Didn’t Read

Sometimes I’ll read an article and think it’s great. But I know that most people don’t have time to get through the whole thing. So I can share it online with a TL;DR and a brief summation. For those who want to read the whole thing, great! For those who don’t have time, they can quickly get the gist and move on.

• TFW — That Feeling When

I recently bought a copy of a Jay Baer book online. When it arrived, I opened it up and it turned out, he had autographed it. So I shared it online with a
TFW you open a book and find the author’s signature in it.” In other words, it’s a nice feeling that everyone knows and you are currently enjoying. Lean into it!

• TIL — Today I learned

As in, TIL a whole bunch of new social media acronyms. I’m now officially ready to Step Up My Social

• YMMV — Your mileage may vary

This one is a bit obscure, but I’ve seen it a lot especially in Facebook Groups where folks are there to learn and to teach. When you add a YMMV to your post you are clarifying that something worked for you but that you aren’t sure it will work for everyone else.

• TFTF — Thanks For The Follow

This is what I might say (or at the very least think ) after you follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Any that I missed? Share them on Facebook or Twitter using the #StepUpYourSocial. In the meantime, HTH (Hope This Helps)!

There are 5 keywords that, when used in a post on Facebook, automatically limit your post's reach. Facebook has labeled the tactic in question as "Engagement Bait."

While Engagement Bait first started being penalized in the Facebook algorithm over a year ago, Facebook just recently began applying their penalties to video content, as well as to text.​

In this episode, we cover the what, the why and the how of Engagement Bait, as well as some tips for avoiding it.

​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Here in Madison, there’s a music venue that used to run this really clever ongoing campaign — they would give away a free pair of tickets to an upcoming concert. To enter, all you had to do was tag the person you would bring with you in the comments if you won. Then they randomly selected one lucky responder to nab a free pair of tickets to the show.

But really, the biggest winner in this contest was the venue.

The contest cost them 2 concert tickets, but hundreds of people were identifying and promoting the shows directly to their friends. And not just any friends, but the friends they most thought would want to go to the show. So while two people got to go for free, hundreds of potential fans were being tagged by friends and notified that a show they might be excited about was right around the corner.

And not only that, the Facebook algorithm would have been going nuts seeing all of this organic engagement the venue’s page was generating. Every time someone tagged a friend, they were micro-targeting one person, but also telling Facebook that this content was hot and they should show it to lots more people. As far as the venue was concerned, this was a win/win.

And all it cost them was a pair of concert tickets!

I used to see this tactic employed on my Facebook feed all the time. You probably did too. And then one day, it just stopped.

That’s because in late 2017, Facebook labeled this type of content as “engagement bait.” And they started penalizing it in the algorithm.

Because Facebook can’t actually know your intention when you share a post, they defined engagement bait pretty broadly as simply any post that mentions one of the 5 following words:

• Like
• Vote
• Comment
• Tag
• Share

It didn’t matter the context, using one of these words simply caused Facebook to devalue your content in the algorithm. Meaning they literally showed your post to fewer people.

As a marketer, this might be annoying. As a user though, you can probably understand why they did this.

While I loved that the concert venue was giving away tickets (I even won a pair once!) the tactic of asking people to tag their friends can get get to be pretty spammy. Like this post if your an Aries doesn’t do much to create meaningful conversations or connections online.

When Facebook first announced the new rules around Engagement Bait, they only applied to the text in your post. Then they updated it to also apply to text in the comments (as lots of clever marketers would simply make their engagement request in the first comment rather than in the post itself).

And now, Facebook has finally made the final jump — they will also demote content that uses engagement bait words (like, vote comment, tag and share) within the audio of a video.

While this might seem frustrating, just remember, it is genuinely in Facebook’s interest that you enjoy the content you, and everyone else, sees in their feed. If not, you, and everyone else, will stop logging in. And then there will be no one to market too anyway!

You can still encourage engagement, you just can’t do so using 5 key words. Don’t ask people to “respond in the comments.” Just ask your question. Your users know how to respond. And don’t ask for the like — create content they will like without being prodded.

Of course you can ignore these rules all you want. But Facebook ultimately decides how many people will see your posts. So ignoring their rules means limiting your own reach. The choice is clear as far as I’m concerned.

Engagement is great! Engagement bait — not so much.

You start a new Facebook brand page. It's only natural to invite everyone you know to like the page.

The problem is, you're actually hurting your page's future growth when you invite people who like you — but don't care about your brand — to like your Facebook brand page.




​In this episode:
• We dive into the Facebook algorithm
• Talk about the difference between "good" and "bad" likes
• Cover helpful tips to grow your page with the right audience
• The importance of using a brand page for your page (as opposed to a personal account)
• And a whole lot more

​​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Are you leaving low hanging fruit on the table? Are you missing opportunities to encourage your current customers, fans or audience to start conversations with you online, thus promoting your brand to their own networks in the process?

In this episode, we cover two inter-related topics: the importance of displaying your handles *everywhere* your audience is and the vital role that engagement plays in creating and managing a beneficial social media program.

Never forget — social media is not a tool to speak TO the people. It’s a tool to speak WITH the people. The goal is to have conversations and to build relationships.

​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Today we’re going to cover 2 inter-related topics: 1) the importance of displaying your handles everywhere you audience is. And 2) the vital role that engagement plays in creating and managing a beneficial social media program.​

So let’s jump right in.

There’s a restaurant in Madison where, after you order, they hand you a number to place on your table so they can bring you your food. Pretty standard operating procedure for a lot of restaurants. BUT on the back of the number they hand you, they’ve printed their social handles. It’s amazing too me how few restaurants take advantage of such precious real estate.

Do you think that diners are going to be more or less likely to post about a restaurant when the restaurant’s handles are right there in their face, as they are captive audiences, waiting for their food.

You don’t need to be a restaurant to learn from this simple social hack. Are there opportunities your brand is missing to turn your offline customers or audience into online fans?

If you’re in a band, invite your fans to connect you on social. No one is going to care more about what you post on Monday morning than the person who came out to see you on Saturday night.

If you run a brick and mortar store, display your handles near the door, near the cash register and on any other spaces you think will speak to your customers.

I’m blown away when I see packaging from big companies that doesn’t mention the company’s social handles.

There’s no one you more want to connect with online than the folks you are already connecting with you offline. They are your base. Your foundation. Your community. Putting your handles everywhere you are already connecting with them helps to move that community to connect with you online as well as off. And when they do so, you have helped facilitate your big fans -- your current customers --  to easily tell their own networks about you, and how much they love you, in the process.

If you hand out paperwork, send out physical products or distribute anything, put your handles on it! If you print t-shirts or bumper stickers or hats, put your handles on them.

If you have a brand hashtag, include that as well.

If people visit your location, whether it’s a brick and mortar store, a restaurant, a non-profit or anything else, display your handles loudly and proudly.
I also recommend putting up a sign encouraging people to “check in” on Facebook. You can offer incentives — a free drink or a bumper sticker for anyone who does so — but to be honest, for a lot of folks, just being asked will be enough encourage to get them to pull out their phones and tell their friends where they are right now. And when they check in, their networks will see those notifications. And the Facebook algorithm will get excited and start pinging away on your behalf.

Never forget — social media is not a tool to speak TO the people. It’s a tool to speak WITH the people. The goal is to have conversations and to build relationships. It’s fine if you are starting the conversations you are having with your community. But it will be waaaay better for you when members of your community are starting the conversations with you instead. Displaying your handles is one of the surest ways available to encourage them to do so. And it costs you nothing.

Caveat: this is true whether or not you display your handles, but ESPECIALLY if you do — you need to be monitoring your social channels and making sure that when folks do tag you, thus starting a conversation, they aren’t then going on to be ignored by you.

You HAVE to speak back. Sometimes a like is all their comment requires. Responses are better though, even if just to say thanks. We’ll do another episode soon on dealing with trolls and difficult questions, but at the least, take advantage of the low hanging fruit right in front of you — the positive comments and the simple questions your audience is asking (do you have a gluten free option? What are your hours?)

If you could monitor your social channels constantly, that would be great! But let’s be realistic, you probably can’t. And that’s okay. Set reminders on your phone or put a post-it note above your desk as a way to remind yourself to check your notifications. At minimum: check them once a day. More is better, but I’d rather you do it once a day consistently than fail trying to do it 3 times a day.

People will be fine with a lag in conversation of a few hours. They’ll likely even forgive a full day passing before getting a response. But any more than that and the window will have closed. You will be trying to converse with someone who has already moved on to the next thing.

Don’t let the low hanging fruit elude you. Post your handles anywhere your community is. And when they talk to you, talk back! A like or a quick thank you costs you nothing and they go a long way towards letting the people that matter to your brand know that you aren’t trying to talk at them, rather you see them as an integral part of your community.

And really, what could be more social than that?!

If you run ads on Facebook without first building quality audiences, it's like you're standing in the street, throwing expensive flyers in the air, and hoping for the best.

Facebook offers you the opportunity to microtarget based on tons of different factors.

In this episode, we talk about the importance of microtargeting.

We will also cover the three different Facebook advertising audience types:
• Custom
• Lookalike and
• Saved

​We'll cover what they are, how to build them, and why you should be using them to run ads on Facebook.

If you enjoy this this podcast, please consider reviewing it on iTunes. Thanks for tuning in! 

​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.