I recently attended the 2020 Social Media Marketing World event in San Diego, and it was an incredible experience! I have done my best to gather the most helpful information and best takeaways from this epic event for you here. Be sure to leave me a comment and let me know if anything was an aha for you too! 

Our first session was by Chris Ducker, virtual CEO and personal branding expert, talking all about "Building a Lasting Legacy with Your Personal Brand."

Here are the biggest takeaways from his session - 

1. You have a personal brand, whether you like it or not. In this day and age, we must build our personal brands with social media.
2. People connect with people. 
3. Become somebody’s favorite … (insert your product/service here)
4. You must listen to your people. Create content that will help them, including your personal stories.

Next up were Michael and Amy Port of Heroic Public Speaking. Their session was "Pitching and Presentations." As...

You get back what you put out into the world.

I was talking about this with my 9 year old son recently - perhaps influenced by the latest James Wedmore podcast with Brandon Lucero. We had a great discussion about how when the boys are mopey, it can make me feel mopey. When they’re happy (usually) mommy’s happy. 

In business, on social media, when speaking in public - this is also true. As an authority in your space, you are the thermometer for the "room," or the online platform that they’re choosing to interact with you on.

If you put out negativity, boring or doomsday content, you’re going to get negativity, and/or simply hear crickets (ie no response) back! If you put out positive, value driven content - people are going to have a positive reaction - and keep coming back!

Taking another step deeper into this, if you want engagement on your social media, you've got to give engagement. What is engagement? Simply likes, comments, shares and saves...

Did you ever see the hashtag video with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake? (If you haven’t seen it, watch it here.) In the video from the Late Night Show, the guys were hilariously poking fun at the over-use of hashtags, but I’m here to tell you that hashtags are actually a very useful tool in your social media toolbox.

In today's post, I’ll go over what hashtags are exactly, and how to go about using them on social media.

A hashtag is simply the pound sign (#) followed by a keyword or phrase, no spaces. Like #greensmoothies or #farmersmarkets. They are used as a way to label or organize your posts into categories of interest to make them easier for people to find on each platform. 

Staying with the food theme, let's say I wanted to make a smoothie. I might hop over to Pinterest or Instagram to search #smoothierecipes. This would return to me a never-ending result of all the posts tagged with #smoothierecipes. If you're a blogger who blogs about smoothies -...

I’m as much of a self development junkie as the next hopeful entrepreneur - especially on the first day of a new year. It feels like a big ole blank slate, just waiting to be highlighted and calendared and sticky noted into perfection! 

THIS is MY year. THIS is when it all changes. When I finally implement all the things, and consistently perform them the RIGHT way.

But, that’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself, right?

What if instead of New Year, NEW You, we went with New Year - MORE you. Sharing more of what makes you special. Letting people in, and showing them that they’re not alone. Being open and honest about our journey, with the intent of helping others move forward in theirs.

You can help them, because you WERE them. More often than not, your ideal client is a mini you - who you were before you discovered the solution to what you were struggling with 3 years ago. That’s why you’re such a good fit for them!

If we stop worrying about...