With our ever changing world, the majority of our storytelling and communication now happens online.Throughout this week’s module, we were encouraged to take a closer look into communication styles and audience interaction. We compared the differences between using a passive or active voice during storytelling, and examined the inverted triangle approach to storytelling.
When I write blog posts, captions, or other content, I prefer to write in an active voice. While I typically use this voice, I hadn’t considered it before. An active voice is achieved when the subject of the sentence is performing the action of the sentence. For example; the dog loves treats. The dog is performing the action of love. Whereas in a passive voice, the subject is receiving the action of the verb. For example; treats are loved by the dog. In this example, the treats are the subject, and they are receiving love. To help clarify this topic, please see the attached video for an in depth explanation of the two voices.
The inverted triangle approach is designed to showcase the most important information at the start of a story. Readers have become lazier with time and often only read headlines or the first few paragraphs of an article. This approach allows storytellers to deliver the most important information first and then elaborate on details later on.
Finally, this week we began the discussion on encouraging audience interaction. My preferred method for this is to always include a call to action while writing copy. For example, if I’m creating a post to talk about books that I’ve read this month, I’ll ask my audience to recommend their favourite books to me or tell me if they’ve read of the mentioned books in the comments section.
It certainly was a busy week with a lot of new information being introduced to us, I look forward to seeing what future weeks have in store.
Like most, I haven’t been on a vacation in a good while. Ontario’s stay-at-home orders have me daydreaming about the last time I truly went on a vacation. To add to the dream, it was also summer during the vacation instead of the height of winter that we’re currently in. So today, I’ve decided to take you away from the cool winter, and give you a glimpse into a magical adventure I went on last summer with four of my best friends; Lana, Kate, Emily, and Jess.
The planning for our vacation was simple: We needed a lot of food and drinks. After that plan was made, we went to AirBnb to find a cottage nearby. Thankfully, there were a lot of options available. We selected a cottage an hour away in Vals-Des-Bois, Quebec. The cottage was on the water and had its own pool and hottub for us to use. Our hosts live in the cottage directly above the one we were staying at. We all agreed this was the one, and started packing! We packed Jess’s car full of groceries and adult beverages and set out for a weekend we’d never forget.
Upon arrival at the cottage, we were greeted by our hosts, Sophia and Michelle. The two women were friendly and very kind as they showed us around the place. We thanked them for their time and started unpacking, which also led to opening some beverages. We decided to spend some time in the pool. Sophia came by to ask if we wouldn’t mind having coffee with her later on, we agreed! It turns out, Sophia was one of the most inspiring women we’ve ever met.
The next day, we continued to eat, drink, and just talk. Lana and myself woke up bright and early to watch the sunrise and started breakfast. Once all the girls were up, we decided to do our makeup (we’re all fans of doing this, just for fun) and listened to music while we just relaxed and took in the incredible surroundings. It turns out the lake we were staying on is called Clay Lake. The whole thing is made of that beautiful blue-grey natural clay. After a few (maybe too many) drinks, we decided to play in the clay along the shore.
Our last morning was spent on the water. Our hosts had a few small boats that we could borrow and so we relaxed on the water for a couple of hours before we finished packing up to head back home. Our girls weekend was an absolute success. We went out with the simple goal of sharing good food, good friends, and a lot of laughs together. We did just that.
Not only did we have a great time, but we met two incredible women along the way. Sophia nicknamed us her little strawberries. We actually commemorated the trip with matching tattoos.
In case you’re interested in booking your own AirBnB cottage vacation, check out this great post about how to select the right one!
What was your last vacation? Better yet, what do you daydream about while staying home right now? Let me know in the comments below!
After a long week of work, it’s often hard to sit down and make sure you’re posting regularly on social media. If you feel like that, well, you’re completely normal. For many, social media can be a daunting task. It becomes even more daunting if you’re not confident in your abilities, which can often lead to being totally overwhelmed. However, social media is no longer an option for the majority of businesses. Even if you struggle with it, it’s imperative to your brand to have an online presence.
Content Deployment
Imagine this: being able to post regularly by spending only a few hours once a month. That is the power of social media automation. I use a program called Laterfor managing my social media accounts. For a low price every month, I can post on many social networks at once without having to struggle to write a caption each day. I spend about four hours at the start of each month to hammer out my entire content calendar.
After writing all of my copy, I can add tags, location, hashtags, and crop images all from the website. All of this information is saved, and then I tell it when I want each post to be published and that’s it. Now all of my content will be deployed without any further action on my end.
Tip: Don’t set it and forget it. As in, don’t just set up all your content deployment and then never check on your social media. It’s still very important to interact with your audience in a timely manner.
Screenshot from Later via web browser: monthly schedule
Optimized Scheduling
It takes a fair bit of work to understand when your audience is online. Normally you’d have to go into each social networking app and review your insights. With automated posting tools like Later, all that information is already plugged in to your calendar. If you look below, you can see the optimal times to post on each day of the week highlighted in pink. The software automatically reads through your insights and finds the best times for you to deploy your content.
Screenshot from Later via web browser: weekly schedule
By scheduling your content in these pink hot spots, you have a much higher chance of more people seeing your posts! This feature isn’t unique to Later, many automated social media platforms have the same built-in technology. Personally, I really love not having to study my audience and instead let the platform do it for me. With this feature, I can spend less time researching scheduling and more time on capturing more content!
Built in Analytics
Similar to scheduling optimization, analytics are also something you’d have to dig through your social networks to find. While they may not be hidden, it is an extra set to go in and search for these statistics. With automation software, analytics are displayed in a very user friendly manner. Shown below is my seven-day overview for an account that I manage. As a social media manager, this feature is something I utilize regularly. It helps me to draw up reports for clients with ease. All of the information that I need is easy to find and digest.
Screenshot from Later via web browser: Analytics
It comes down to where you want to spend your time. Are you a pro at finding analytics already and don’t mind having to open your apps everyday to post? Then maybe this doesn’t appeal to you. However, if you’re someone like me who struggles with consistency, this kind of platform is invaluable.
Do you currently use automated social media software? Do you think you’ll explore it after reading this? Personally I wouldn’t be nearly as productive without apps like Later. It saves me precious time and allows me to take on more clients. If you struggle with consistency on social media, I would highly recommend checking out automation software!
As consumers, I think we can all recall a time where we wanted to book a service but had a really difficult time finding any information about pricing on the service provider’s website. From a consumer point of view; this can be the reason they never bother to book with that service provider. Now this may vary amongst different industries, but I’d wager that many consumers have done the same thing.
There are pros and cons to sharing your prices so openly online. It could potentially ward off clients who aren’t willing to pay your prices, it tells your competitors what you charge, and it may discourage some potential business from hearing your sales pitch. However, do you want clients who don’t see the value in your services? Do you want to have to convince them to book you? As far as letting your competitors know what you charge, if everyone decided to be transparent with their prices, there wouldn’t be an issue. In fact, it would be easier to define the value that your specific services add compared to that of your competitors. Regardless, we aren’t here to talk about the cons. Today, I want to explore the potential benefits of price transparency with you and let you know why you should consider it.
What is price transparency?
Achieving price transparency is simple: post your prices, and be honest about them. For industries that sell goods, this is very easily done and is already quite common. However, when we start to explore service based industries, the lines begin to blur. Why is it that service based industries tend to hide their pricing? It could be one of two things: The business is based on the work needing to be done, so it’s difficult to give a general price or the business wants customers to express an interest before revealing their prices. While these may be perfectly valid reasons for not showcasing your prices, it can be frustrating from a consumer perspective. You can choose where and how you display your prices, but by using the practice of price transparency on social media, you can create a sense of trust with your audience.
What does it look like?
It can look many ways! Ultimately, it comes down to posting your prices clearly and in a realistic way. If all of your prices are “starting prices” make sure that you state that upfront so that your client can’t miss it. For example, I work as a hairstylist and each head of hair is unique. Everyone needs a different amount of color and time to complete a job. That being said, we’ve averaged out the “normal” amount of color needed. After we go over that amount, the price starts to rise. We’ve invested in a smart scale that calculates the cost by weight so that we can fairly charge our clients. All that to say, when I post big color transformations I try to include a full price breakdown form time-to-time. As you’ll see below, here’s a recent post where I did a price explanation for the services provided.
Screenshot taken from Instagram @emmashairstyling
A post like this is a great piece of content for many service fields! Built someone a new roof? Tell your audience about how many hours went into the job and what you had to spend on supplies. Completed a beautiful set of nails for someone? Tell us about the extra time and material you spent creating nail art for that particular client.
Why should you do it?
When weighing the benefits and downsides of displaying your pricing, I suggest asking yourself about how important the trust of your audience is to you. If you struggle to gain the trust of your online following, I highly recommend posting your prices. You don’t have to justify them, but by providing these details upfront, your clients no longer have to guess what kind of bill they’ll receive when choosing to work with you. This could be the determining factor on why they choose to work with you instead of your competition.
I’ve attached a video to add some food for thought for you. It’s a TedTalk on how price transparency could majorly change healthcare in the United States. While healthcare is an extreme example, it’s a great visual for the positive effects of price transparency. Obviously paying for medical bills versus new tile for your kitchen are two very different things, however the result can often be the same. In the video, the speaker uses a phrase that paints a vivid picture: Gotcha pricing.
YouTube video from the channel TED. The speaker is Jeanne Pinder.
Gotcha pricing is the single largest complaint that I hear about in the beauty industry. Clients come in expecting to pay a certain price, and over the course of the appointment they don’t realize that their bill is continuing to rise based on factors they don’t understand. Clear consultations and estimated quotes can help mitigate this risk, but one of the realistic ways to reduce this risk is by showcasing examples of your work and the cost associated with that job similar to the photo above.
While there may be a few drawbacks to posting your prices in a transparent manner, I fully believe that the benefits outweigh them. I think it’s nearly impossible to put a price on trust, that it is an invaluable asset to your business. Have you ever considered price transparency?
After a long day of being in the house, you open your phone. Immediately you start scrolling, but what are you seeing? Chances are, you’re taking in a whole lot of bad news. On your screen are news articles about the world being on fire, Instagram posts about injustices, Facebook feuds between loved ones over politics, and a bounty of negativity. Instead of looking away though, you keep scrolling… and scrolling. Welcome to doomscrolling.
Kevin Roose from the NY Times says he’s been “falling into deep, morbid rabbit holes filled with coronavirus content, agitating myself to the point of physical discomfort, erasing any hope of a good night’s sleep.” and we can relate. Doomscrolling is simply the action of consuming heaps of negative media online. It happens when we can’t stop reading negative content, no matter how horrible it makes us feel.
Why do we do it?
If doomscrolling makes us miserable, why the heck do we still do it? According to Ken Yeager, PhD, our brains love the abuse. He says that we are hardwired to seek out things that can harm us as a survival mechanism If we know and understand the enemy, maybe we can survive against it. But what happens when the enemy becomes the never-ending stream of negative media? Here’s a similar view from psychology professor, Mary McNaughton-Cassill.
How the heck can we stop?
Doomscrolling has been linked to increases in anxiety, depression, and many other mental health issues, so how can we stop doing it? The first step is realizing that you’re doing it. It’s hard to stop something that you’re unaware of. Try and observe how you feel about doing it, are you worse off after consuming so much negativity? If so, start to limit the time you spend on screens. Limit your exposure time to reduce stress and anxiety.Yeager recommends training yourself to see the positive, he says that it will not come naturally, but over time it will get easier.
Do you ever find yourself stuck in a loop of scrolling through negativity for hours on end? Please follow the tips above and seek help if you feel your mental health deteriorating.
I think we can all agree that social media has become very visual. The use of pictures, videos, and graphics has never been higher. Businesses (including yours) need to learn how to thrive in a world that cares heavily about images. How can a business create unique images that help showcase their personality while making the business look professional? The answer is branding photography.
Adding personality to your business
A lot of customers want to buy from people, rather than companies now. While this can be challenging, it also creates a wonderful opportunity for brands to ditch impersonal marketing for a more direct and authentic approach. Branding photographers are invaluable because not only do they capture what you’re selling, but they also capture you. Customers want to know about what drives you both personally and professionally.
Create unique stock images
Here’s the thing, anyone can look up a stock photo of a donut and post it on social media to advertise that they sell donuts. However, that photo does not accurately show their donuts, only a generic one. This is not authentic marketing, nor is it that effective. Instead, having a photographer capture images that are exclusively and authentically yours helps you to stand out amongst your competitors. Branding photographers are experts at creating a variety of images to help benefit your business.
A video by Angie McPherson showcasing the different images captured by a branding photographer.
Elevate your brand
Quality branding photography let’s businesses compete using quality rather than pricing. When you capture professional images of your services/goods, you are directly elevating your brand. Investing in your image is never a bad call, especially for brands who are looking to increase their prices or improve their professionalism.
Consistency
The best way for me to tell you about creating consistency in your social media, is simply to show you! Check out this side-by-side image showing my Instagram feed before and after hiring a branding photographer.
Screenshots captured from my Instagram @emmashairstyling
Pretty different, huh? Before hiring a photographer, I had an idea to try and make my feed look cohesive but it was still all over the place. After hiring her, it’s fast and easy for me to post without having to put serious thought into it. Now all of my photos look good together, no matter what order I put them in. She created images that specifically show off myself, my brand colors, and my style. I use these images across all of my social media platforms to create a consistent image.
Have you ever considered hiring a branding photographer?
I understand that branding photography can be a sizable investment, but I assure you, it is worth every penny. I encourage every brand to take the plunge and decide to invest in standing out.
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 