We all know that social media is an essential part of of the daily lives for many Gen X, Gen Y (Millennials) and Gen Z. Even if you are a baby boomer, then you at least have a Facebook account. Have you looked at Facebook's numbers recently? One billion active users, making it one of the largest sites on the internet and almost the size of a big country. I've been telling you how to get new customers via social media for the last 60 some posts now, but have you been listening to your potential customers through these platforms? Social listening is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools out there for many small businesses and it's one tool that a lot of people aren't using effectively.

One of the biggest mysteries on the internet is how can I get verified on Instagram? Any non- social media users might think it's silly to get that blue check mark next to your name for anyone that is not a public figure. However, for many influencers on Instagram, it's a necessity in order to get things like sponsorships and brand deals. It's also a big ego boost, you know the "I got the blue check mark, so you need to take me seriously" sort of deal. Yet, up until recently it was a huge secret on how people could get verified on Instagram.

Like many other sites back in the early days of the internet, we saw message boards and chat rooms. AOL and Yahoo! had their own versions of topic message boards, like if you wanted to talk about boy bands you were getting the latest dirt from there. No one ever saw this one coming, Reddit is slowly becoming one of the bigger named social media sites out there. It used to be a site known for (and still is in some aspects), it's trolling but these days, Reddit has become one of the bigger social media platforms on the internet! How does this particular platform work and how can you be a part of it? I answer this question and more in this week's blog.

You know what they say, becoming a successful brand is easy, maintaining your status and business model is hard. This is especially true on social media because 96% of the people that discuss brands online do not follow those brands’ owned profiles. In 2018, if you are not on social media, your brand does not exist. While some may consider this faulty logic because they get their business via referral, but, the truth of the matter is that their audience is already on social media. With over 2.6 billion users, you can easily find ten people you know that is one at least one social media platform. If you are one of those brands that does not know what to do on social media, here are five things you shouldn't be doing.

If you know what Snapchat is, you are probably between the ages of 15-29, or the millennial/gen z generation. If you don't know what it is, then you, my friend, are not hip (gosh do people even say that anymore? I feel old). Snapchat is one of those apps, that came up along with Vine (RIP), which was a short video capturing app that also captured items in the moment. The one thing that set Snapchat apart from the rest of the social media competition, was their use of these "in the moment" videos, pictures, and how the content users put up was available for only 24 hours to friends or even private message.