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.

"Stories" are the Facebook response to Snapchat — fun, quirky bits of content that disappear after 24 hours.

Throughout the Facebook Universe — WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, people are currently sharing over a billion stories every day!

Instagram Stories alone has over 400 million daily active users — more than twice as many as Snapchat.

Stories have all kinds of fun and interesting capabilities built directly into the platform. 

In this episode of Step Up Your Social, we cover the what, the when and the how of Stories along with a bunch of tips, tricks and fun things you should try.

Listen today and let us know if you have any questions, or anything to add to the conversation around this fun topic!

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

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.

In episode 2 of #StepUpYourSocial, we tackle the important subject of Twitter lists.

One common complain about Twitter is that the platform can feel chaotic. Twitter lists are how you make order out of that chaos.

They serve as an amazing listening tool, whether or not your brand is active on Twitter.


​Throughout the episode we cover:

• How to build or subscribe to lists
• The types of lists you should be using
• The difference between public and private lists
• Using the free tool Tweetdeck to more easily build and manage your Twitter lists
• And much more.

The episode is available now. Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts. That's right — we are now live across the podcast universe! Find us iTunes or the Google Play store, on Stitcher, Overcast, Spotify... If we aren't available yet in your podcast player of choice, let us know and we'll look into rectifying that.

That's for listening. Subscribe today and then get back to telling your story!

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

That's right! I've started a podcast. 

It's called Step Up Your Social and it's intended to provide quick, actionable tips to help you master your social media. I plan on making these all "flash episodes," around 10 minutes long or less.

That way you can hop in, learn something quick and get right back to work!

Have a topic you want to hear me cover? Drop it in the comments, tweet it at me, or use the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.

In the inaugural episode, I discuss the difference between crossposting your comments and autoposting them.

One of those is good, the other is very, very bad.

Give a listen. And then get right back to telling your story!

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

Wisconsinites went to the polls on Tuesday In droves. The final results of the election though do not fully reflect the will of the people.

There were five statewide races: Governor (with Lt. Gov on the same ticket), US Senator, Attorney General, Treasurer and Secretary of State. Democrats won all five races. This is the first time that’s happened since 1982. ​

Dems had unmistakable victories at the statewide level. As you look down the ballot though, the results tell a very different story.

Wisconsin has eight Congressional seats all of which were up for election on Tuesday. Going into Election Day, Democrats controlled three of them and Republicans the remaining five. No seat flipped.

All told, Wisconsin Democratic Congressional candidates received 1,350,960 votes.
​Wisconsin Republican Congressional Candidates received 1,171,456 votes.

[These numbers have been updated since original posting, as additional totals have been tallied and reported. See most up-to-date vote breakdown here.]

And yet, as mentioned, Dems got three out of eight seats.

That’s right, Dems got 53.5% of the vote, yet took only 37.5% of the seats.

When we look at the State Assembly, which had every seat up for grabs this past Tuesday, that disparity becomes even more glaring.

While final numbers are still not fully available for all races, Democratic Assembly candidates appear poised to take right around 1.3 million votes to Republican Assembly candidates 1.1 million votes.

And yet Democrats walked away with only 36 seats, while Republicans took a staggering 63!​

That means that Democrats won 54% of the vote and yet took only 36% of the seats.

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!

Ever wanted to spice up your Facebook post, but didn't know how?
​
With a Facebook Note, you can add a cover photo, as well as pictures and GIFs throughout your posts.

You can also format your text with bold and italics, bullet and numbered lists, hyperlinks and much more.

So instead of just another boring picture, your post can look like this:

I provide private lessons to businesses, campaigns, nonprofits, solopreneurs, bands... anyone who wants to get more out of their social media program. I teach classes on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

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.

It’s always best practice to read through an article before sharing it via social media.

Sometimes a headline tells you most of what you need to know, and it’s okay to only skim the article, without reading every word. For example, if your local paper reports that a new baby panda was born at your zoo, you can pretty well trust you got the gist of the takeaway before even clicking on the link. It’s still a good idea to read through it, of course, just to be sure there are no critical takeaways/surprising angles towards the bottom of the page. But you are probably safe making assumptions about what you’ll find in the article.

While reading through articles before you share them with your networks them is important, if the article in question is about you, it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!

Yesterday, the Salt Lake Tribute named Senator Orrin Hatch “Utahn of the Year.” (Yep, apparently someone from Utah is a Utahn — good to know!)

On its face, this is a pretty big honor. A significant paper from the state’s capital city named Hatch their person of the year. I can see why he would be excited to get that out far and wide to his networks.

Unfortunately for him, the article didn’t exactly line up with the headline.

The very first line of the article should have been a clue to even the most casual of readers: “These things are often misunderstood.”

It then lays out what he has done to deserve such a title.
    •    Hatch’s part in the dramatic dismantling of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
    •    His role as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in passing a major overhaul of the nation’s tax code.
    •    His utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power.

While the first two bullet points were clearly intended to be direct hits against Hatch, it is possible that he could wear both criticisms as points of pride. If he thinks it’s good to scale back national monuments and to raise working people’s taxes so that massive corporations can get a tax break, then he might have read the opening lines and been proud of his accomplishments.
But of course the opening line of the article made clear that the Salt Lake Tribune editorial staff is far from impressed with their senior senator.

And even if the intention of the first two bullet points confused him, that last one was pretty damn clear: “His utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power.”

Oof.

The article goes on to call him a liar who has long overstayed his welcome in Utah. It also says that if he doesn’t retire now, the voters should toss him from office in 2018.

Double Oof.

​I read the article yesterday and thought — "Damn! This is brutal." 

But of course that’s not the story here. The story here is that while I read the article and found it brutal, Senator Hatch (and/or one of his aides) saw the article as well, but never read past the title before proudly shared the scathing op-ed with his Twitter network this morning.

I always say that the only constant in social media is change. I don’t write to tell you every time any little thing changes on a social channel — if I did you’d hear from me literally dozens of times per week. But not every update is worthy of a blog post or an email. 

Recently though, a few exciting updates have rolled out that are worth sharing.

Instagram Hashtags
You can now “follow” a hashtag on Instagram, just like you would follow an account.

Once you follow a hashtag, Instagram will include top posts using it directly into your feed.​

To follow a hashtag, simply search for it on Instagram.

​Then click “follow.”

Twitter Threads
I'm very excited about this update, although it’s a bit hard to follow Twitter’s logic. They recently doubled the character length for tweets from 140-280, thus making threads, and therefore this update, much less relevant. But they're not irrelevant, so it’s still an exciting update.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of threads, check out this blog post where I explain what they are and how they work (along with a bunch of other fun Twitter tricks and tips).

Before, when you created a tweet thread, you had to keep responding to previous tweets. Which is fine, but can be clunky. If you don't reply to the most recent tweet in your thread, they get out of order and your thread becomes hard to follow. It can take a few moments for your tweet to post, meaning you have to sit tight with your thoughts, waiting for it to catch up.

Now if you want to create a tweet thread, simply start typing your tweet. Below, next to the “tweet” button, you will see a plus. Click it and Twitter will open up another tweet for you. Keep going until you are finished and then you can send them all as a single unit.

BIG IMPROVEMENT, ​even if it's a little less relevant that it might have been a few months ago.

Facebook Stories
Facebook Stories aren’t new, but they have pretty much been getting ignored. Stories were Facebook’s response to Snapchat. They are small pieces of content — pictures, short videos or text — that disappear after 24 hours.

They have all the fun Snapchat-style filters built in, along with a lot of other fun tools. Spend a few minutes in there and you will find tons of fun toys. And they are updated regularly.

While Stories aren't new, what is new is that they are now available to Brand Pages. (Until recently, only personal pages could create Stories.)

To access Facebook Stories for a Brand Page, you can use the new Facebook Creator app. Or, open the Facebook app on your phone or tablet (currently, Stories only work via mobile), and go to your Brand Page. Underneath where you it lets you “write something,” click “create story.”

Once you have finished creating your tiny, disappearing masterpiece, add it to your Story. ​

While the follow up tweet didn’t get nearly as many retweets or likes as the original tweet, it did appease the internet, which is always hungry for a social media scandal.

You need look no further than the responses to see that the follow up fully appeased the Twitterverse. This time.

But user beware: if you or your team require coffee to start the day, then by all means, have it on hand! If you are McDonald’s that really shouldn’t be a problem. 🙄 🙄 🙄

When Facebook Live first came out, I’ll admit it — I was daunted. ​

I’m supposed to go to stream live to the world without the opportunity for a second take? Ummm, no thanks!

I had to worry about sound, lighting, my "script," distractions in the background... It was daunting.

But here’s the thing — Facebook Live is a hugely important tool in your digital toolkit. I regularly work with clients who go Live on Facebook for the first time and find that their videos reach more people that like their page! (300% reach — yes please!!!)

We know that people watch Live videos 3x longer than videos that aren’t live. And that they engage with them 10x more than regular videos!

So yeah, apprehension aside — Facebook Live videos get people watching and engaging.

Before I ever went Live on Facebook for the world to see, I came up with a hack that allowed me to ease my way into the otherwise scary world of live streaming.

And here’s the thing: It’s so simple, you’re going to laugh.

Before going Live for an audience via my brand page, I went Live via my personal page with my privacy settings adjusted to “Only me.”

This meant I could practice being on camera, see how the video looked on my computer, hear the sound, play with the awesome built-in filters, and a whole lot else, knowing that I’d be the only to see my first take.

So here’s the step-by-step breakdown.

Open up Facebook on your smartphone. Where you would say "What's on your mind, choose "Live." 

If that option isn't there, then just click into the post and then click on the camera icon below.

You will then get a list of options. Choose "Live Video."

Once you have done that, directly underneath your name, you will see a dropdown menu that has likely defaulted to either “Public” or Friends.”

Click on it and you will get a list of privacy setting options. 

Select "Only me."

Now when you go live, the only person who can see your video is you. ​