Halve Your Time, Double Your Results!

I hear so many people complain that Social Media Marketing just takes too long, so they neglect it altogether. 

I get it. And I'm not one for planning further than tomorrow, but I've developed a new social media workflow that has really been working for me — and I'm going to share it with you!

You see, I did an experiment using Hours where I tracked every single thing I did for a whole month (from sleeping to exercising and everything in between), to see how I actually spent my time. Turns out I was spending about six hours a week playing games on my iPhone, and almost 11 hours a week on social media, so I vowed to cut those numbers down. Just think what you could do with an extra 17 hours a week!

Over the past few weeks, since I started being more intentional with my planning and content, and sticking to this workflow I’ve averaged 140-180 new Instagram followers per week. Prior to that I was going up and down a little each week but things were pretty stagnant. 

Download the guide below and learn how to streamline your social media workflow, cut your time in half, while doubling your results! Here's what you'll get: 

• My ‘week at a glance’ guide
• A downloadable social media content calendar
• A list (and review) of my favorite social media tools
• A guide to the best times to post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest

While you're thinking about your social media presence, when's the last time your Instagram account got a clean-up? Here's some easy-to-implement tips that will get you big results. 

8 Ways to Fix Your Instagram Profile

The change in seasons always feels like a good time to look around and refresh the things in your life that may have become a little stale. Your online brand and social media presence is no exception. So this week I propose that we start an Instagram clean-up together. 

Why? Because you know what you do, what services you provide, what you stand for, and what your brand is all about - but is your Instagram profile really communicating that to new friends and fans that are seeing it for the first time? 

First, join our Facebook group so you can share your progress and results - then read through the checklist below and see where you might be going wrong. 

PART 1: WHAT’S IN YOUR BIO?

IS MY BIO SUPER RELEVANT? 

• You only get 150 characters, make every one of them count! 
• Leave out that you are a mom, wife, mother, dog-lover and only put in what is really relevant to your brand. 

IS IT CLEAR WHAT I DO? 

• Clear trumps clever every time.  
• For example, instead of saying: ‘I make pretty things to brighten your world’ try: ‘I’m an illustrator, specializing in pattern, bright colors, and hand lettering.’ 

DO I HAVE A STRONG CALL-TO ACTION? 

• Always, always, always tell people what you want them to do next, and how they can reach you. 
• With Instagram’s new business accounts you can add a contact button right on your profile, but it never hurts to tell people what to do either. You could say ‘Download your free _____’ and include a link to that specific page or opt-in on your website.  

IS MY PROFILE PIC EASY TO SEE, RELEVANT AND PROFESSIONAL? 

• People like connecting with real human beings, so help them do that. 
• The mistakes I see most often are pics that are too far away (especially when cropped into that tiny little Instagram circle on someone’s phone), pics with family or friends (this is all about you my dear), using pets or kids, or underexposed / poorly taken photos. If you don’t have a professionally-taken portrait at least make sure it has good lighting, a clear background, and is close enough that most of the frame is filled with your face!

TO DOWNLOAD THE REST OF THE CHECKLIST, ENTER YOUR EMAIL BELOW. 

Also, check out my guide on how to spend less time on social media, but DOUBLE your results! I've been gaining 180 new followers a week on Instagram by following these tips. 

#Save Your Periscopes

If you've been using Periscope for a while you'll know that your 'scopes' disappear within 24 hours. There was a service called Katch, that would save your scopes for you, but it recently closed down.

Periscope is now testing out permanent save options. Right now it's in public beta and all you have to do is include #save in your caption.

Of course you can still go back and delete it afterwards if you decide you don't actually want it to be available forever.

Soon there will be an option  within the app to set the time limit without having to include the save hashtag. 

Personally I'm all for the new option, because you'll be able to link to great scopes permanently, there will be no more ugly 'this Periscope has expired' messages on Twitter, and you'll be able to embed great videos into other sites.

What do you think, would you like to be able to save some Periscopes permanently?

Snapchat Launches On-Demand Geofilters

Snapchat has released a great new feature, on-demand geofilters. Getting married, hosting an event for work? Now you can upload your own filter artwork, set the time, and specify the exact location where it will be available. 

Snapchat also provides a variety of editable templates for you to choose from, in case you aren’t actually an artist or designer. 

I tested it this week and it was remarkably easy to do. Here’s how...

Head over to https://www.snapchat.com/on-demand and either download the templates or use them as a starting point to design your own (you’ll need either Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator). 

Making sure your design follows the Snapchat Geofilters Submission Guidelines (https://geofilters.snapchat.com/submission-guidelines) upload your artwork. 

Next, choose your date and time, and then map out exactly where you want your filter to be available.  Once your filter is approved (mine took about an hour) you’ll get an email confirmation. The only thing left is to tell all your friends once it goes live! 

Here's what my filter looked like:

It’s that easy! A whole city block seems to cost about $5.23 for an hour but I played around with the area and time, and got $1,245.44 for 12 hours with an area of 4,981,769 (which was a square containing about 30 city blocks). 
There are some limitations, for example, your area must be within 5,000,000 square feet so you can’t choose your whole town or state. 

There are some metrics available, although you’ll have to wait until 8am PST the next day to see them. Here’s what they look like: 

Don’t expect to get any detailed analytics from Snapchat, they don’t collect much information about their users up-front.

For more social media and marketing articles, tips, and info head over to www.jessica-mack.com