If you work with people, you should have a photo/media library. Period.​

Taking pictures of your customers/fans/community will help you tell your story in real time. It will also help ensure you have great content to use for years to come.

There’s no shortage of stock photography on the internet, but none of it has your team members in it, or your customers wearing/using/engaging with your products, or events taking place in  neighborhoods where you live.

You don’t need to be an amazing photographer to build a photo library, you just need to pull out your smartphone and start taking pictures. If you have multiple team members, you should all take photos regularly to ensure as many different shots as possible of any given event, sale, party, etc.

But that’s where things gets complicated. If several members of your team are taking photos, then those photos are spread out across several different phones and devices.

There are many services out there that aim to solve this problem. Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Photos… all of them can do it. But they are all clunky and slow, and therefore unlikely to be used regularly and reliably. And if you aren’t sharing all your photos, the system isn’t working.

Here’s the good news: If every member of your team uses at least one Apple product, Shared iCloud Drives are the simplest solution you can imagine to solve this annoying problem.

Adding photos to a Shared Drive takes three clicks of the screen. Literally. And then everyone with access will have all shared photos and videos right on their phones and other Apple devices.

To add a photo(s)/video(s) to a Shared Drive, simply open up the media on your phone you want to share.

Then click in the share box in the bottom left of the screen.

Then just hit post and everyone in the Shared Drive will get a notification that there is new media in the Shared Drive.​

When you open up the Shared Drive, you can toggle between Photos and People.

They can only accept your invitation if they have an iCloud enabled device (a Mac computer, phone or tablet). You can invite them through their email or phone number, so long as that contact info is associated with an iCloud account.

Shared Drives are a great tool for placing all media at the fingertips of everyone on your team. You can have as many as you want too, so maybe have one accessible to interns or revolving staffers, and another for senior staffers/stakeholders. Or you have different Shared Drives for different parts of your team. Whatever works for you and your organization.

Have questions? Hit me up. I’m here to help you and you team get started building your Digital Media Library.

Check out some other iPhone tips and tricks.

Have any favorite secret iOS tips, tricks, tools or hacks that you love? Share them in the comments!

Once you’ve saved a few items, you can then build collections, to make it even easier to navigate your favorite material. ​

So you might have Saved Facebook folders for digital tips, family pics, funny videos, recipes, articles to read later… the options are endless!​

I’d love to hear from you about how you think you might use this feature. Share them in the comments or connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.

You are busy; there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything. Social media feels like a chore; one that never ends. You might feel that if you can't do it right, why bother doing it all.

Fret not: A good social media program can be run in as few as 20 minutes a day.

This session will help you spend your limited social media time wisely, ensuring you reap the greatest rewards from this ever-growing part of business – in as few as 20 minutes a day!

By having a plan, segmenting tasks and properly organizing your ideas, you can create and manage an interesting, engaging and valuable social media program without having to sacrifice all of your many other responsibilities.

In the session, we cover topics like:

• Optimizing Your Social
  
• Having a Plan
  
• The Importance of a Blog
  
• Creating and Curating Content
  
• The Facebook Algorithm
  
• Engaging Your Audience
  
• And more
  

On Friday, Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States before a crowd of about a quarter of a million people gathered on the National Mall.

The following day, half a million people took to the street's in our nation's capital for the #WomensMarch in order to "stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families - recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country." 

Along with the central march in Washington, DC, there were another 2.5 million people participating in 600 sister marches world wide.

The largest marches were in Los Angeles (750k), Washington, DC (500k), New York (400k) and Chicago (250k). It is not surprising the biggest crowds were in the three most populous cities and our nation's capital. 

The top ten largest marches* were:
Los Angeles, CA: 750,000
Washington, DC: 500,000
New York, NY: 400,000
Boston, MA: 100,000
Chicago, IL: 250,000
Denver, CO: 100,000
Madison, WI: 100,000
Portland, OR: 100,000
Seattle, WA: 100,000
St. Paul, MN: 90,000

BUT, when we look at the size of the march compared to the city population, rather than the raw numbers by city, things get interesting. 

Washington, DC comes out on top, with number of  participants equivalent to 75% of their population. [Before we move forward, let's break that down: Washington, DC has a population of 659,000 people. They had 500,000 marchers. So the percentage of marchers, as compared to the city's population, was 500,000/659,000 = 75.87%.] But many people traveled from all over the country to participate in the central march.

Second to DC, the clear winner of marchers by city population was Madison, WI with over 40% turnout!!!

When rearranged for turnout ratio, the top marching cities are now as follows:
Washington, DC: 75.87%
Madison, WI: 41.15%
St. Paul, MN: 30.51%
Los Angeles, CA: 19.23%
Portland, OR: 16.42%
Boston, MA: 15.5%
Denver, CO: 15.38%
Seattle, WA: 15.34%
Chicago, IL: 9.26%
New York, NY: 4.76%

Great work Madison, Wisconsin. Way to represent your values.
Check out some of the great social content from the day at #WomensMarchMadison.

*March sizes sourced from The Hill.
Population size is based on city limits and sourced from the Google Knowledge Graph.

This awesome infographic was created by iCandy-Graphics and Web Design. Follow them on Twitter @iCandyGraphics1.

Facebook is nothing if not dynamic. Understand how part of its functionality works today, and tomorrow you’ll notice that it’s changed. A week later, it may have changed yet again.

The goal shouldn’t be to KNOW everything about how the platform works, rather to spend enough time with it that you know how to grow and adapt with it.

Recently, Facebook made a change to how it displays a brand’s response time and it added an option to send instant replies to messages you receive through your Facebook page.

Both concepts are easy, and worth taking a moment to understand.

The Change: Response Time
Until very recently, Facebook published to your page how long it takes you to respond to  messages you receive through your brand page. It might say a few minutes, an hour or a day. It also publishes your response rate.

Pro-tip: Even if you are going to respond to someone through another medium (phone, email...), respond to their initial message to let them know. For example: “Thanks for writing, I’m calling now.” It’s quick, easy, not at all awkward, and it allows you to maintain a 100% response rate on your page even when communicating through other methods.

While Facebook still publishes your response rate, they made a major shift regarding your response time. It used to be something you couldn’t edit or control (save for responding quicker to messages in the future). It was a report for your customers on the speediness of your response time. No more. Now, it is a tool that allows you to let people know how long they should expect you to take to return their message.

If you have someone working on your social media full-time, it should take you less than an hour. Or maybe even just a few minutes. Let people know that. But if it’s just you and Facebook is one of 1000 things you are managing, you can now let people know that it might take you a day to respond.

The set up is easy.

Go to your Facebook brand page. Directly below your avatar, you will notice a section that shares things like how many followers you have, how many have checked in with you and the like. The very first thing in that section will be your response rate and your response time.

To edit it, go to your page's Settings (located in top right hand corner of your page). Then click on Messaging in the left-hand menu.

From here, simply pick your (reasonable) time frame.

Pro tip: Be honest here, both for your own sake and for that of your customer. If it’s going to take you a day to respond, don’t say you will respond within an hour. Set up expectations that you can meet, and then work hard to meet them.

So that is the change Facebook made. But they also recently made a fairly substantial addition to their brand messenger.

The New Option: Instant Replies
You can now set up Instant Replies that will automatically be sent to anyone who writes to your brand through Facebook.

Let’s say you rarely check your Facebook messages, but you live in Gmail. Send an instant reply telling people that you’ll be in touch soon, but if they want a quicker response, they should email you as well. Or provide a phone number they can call. Or let them know you will be in touch, and send them to your website to shop/learn/take action in the meantime.

We can’t control how people choose to reach out to us. But with this new functionality, we have yet another tool in our toolkit to ensure happy customers and seamless customer service.

Not sure what to put in your Instant Reply? Drop me a line and let's figure it out together!

The wait is over! It’s now officially as easy to switch between Instagram accounts on your mobile device as it is to switch between Twitter accounts.

For those of you who run only a single account, this won’t change your interaction with the platform. But if you have a personal account, and you also run one for your business, non-profit, band, microbrewery or anything else, this is the time to get excited.

Until now, you had to log out of one account and login to another to switch back and forth. Tracking down passwords and taking the extra time to move around pretty much guaranteed that whatever account was your primary, stayed your primary.

Instagram heard our frustration and they have—finally!—acquiesced. Switching between accounts is now easy.

Open up the app. In the top right corner, you will see a gear. Click it.

Scroll down to the bottom of the list and click on “Add Account.”

Login with your second account.

Now, you can simple toggle between the accounts. Go to your homepage (bottom right icon showing your avatar). At the top of that page, you will see your username, followed by a ٧.

Click it and you will see a list of all accounts you are logged into. You can now toggle back and forth to your heart’s desire. That's it--now enjoy!

Quick note: You can repeat this process with numerous accounts.