Business

Welcome back everyone to your Ideal Reverie! I want everyone to be honest with me here, when was the last time you scrolled through your social media? Let me guess, was it today, or maybe even within the last hour? Well, no need to feel embarrassed as you certainly aren’t alone. Social media is vital in today’s world for staying in touch with people and the world as a whole. Based on research done by SocialMediaToday up to 71% of people will get news from social media. I’ll be honest I am definitely in that percentage. With this being the case, it only makes sense that social media is an important tool to utilize if you’re looking to build a brand for yourself. In this article I will talk a bit about what social media I recommend and what I am currently doing with them.  The first two tips I think are important to building your social media presence are why you are building it and the end goal. These will help you figure out what social media to use and how to use it. If you’re a business-to-business retailer, being active on TikTok is less effective than say LinkedIn. Vice versa if you are a consumer-focused business, TikTok is always better the LinkedIn. Now that’s not to say you can’t do both, but we will talk about that more a little later. So, what is your reason for getting into social media? Taking me as an easy example, I had multiple reasons to get into it once I began building my brand. The first was exposure, building a brand is hard if no one knows you exist. The second was to build a community. Social media is a great way to stay in touch and connect with people. The final reason was it is extremely cost-efficient and easy. Social media has no monetary cost to download and start posting. Remember though, your time is money so don’t forget to be aware of how you are utilizing yours. Getting started and posting is extremely easy as well. You can get started online or even on your phone just by downloading the app. It will ask you for some basic information and you can set up your profile in under 10 minutes. These examples above are focused on my brand more than anything. Many people may have the same reasons while others will have different reasons. It is also good to know that building brand awareness and a community will take different forms depending on the specifics of your business. As an influencer, your goal might be the same as a typical business, but your methods will differ. No matter what the case just being aware of why you’re putting in this time and effort is important. The next piece of the puzzle is your end goal with each social media. Again, I’ll talk about this in reference to myself to put it into perspective. The end goal of everyone on social media is to get more exposure, why else put in the work? The difference is what the end goal of that exposure is. Are you hoping to gain more followers and active members, or perhaps selling your product or services? My personal goal is a mix, right now I am trying to focus on building the community aspect first. My next step would be to turn that audience to my website, blog or streams. The final goal is to help me sell my books, services and merchandise. I have my goals structured so I have to complete one before moving on to the next. These are generic goals. I have tailored my current strategy to me specifically on how to accomplish them. Whatever your goal, understanding it will help you manage your social media correctly. If, as an influencer, social media is your only form of business then you should be posting much more often than the average person. If you’re a business and all you use it for is to have another way to talk with your customers, posting every day most likely isn’t worth the effort. Social media is a powerful marketing tool, you don’t want to fall into the trap of doing too much. Don’t attempt to take on every social media, or post every day, if you only have 10 minutes a week to dedicate to it. This is an important next step once you have your goals and reasons for building your social media presence. Make sure you put effort into what is best for your brand and don’t worry about anything else. Referring to my earlier example, a B2B retailer should not focus on TikTok. As per Statista over 70% of TikTok users are between the ages of 18 and 34. As a retailer on social media, you’re focusing on other businesses, hence other business owners. Spending your time or energy on this platform doesn’t make sense, and it would be better to turn to alternative platforms such as Facebook. After knowing more about your target audience, you can decide where best to spend your time. Choose the social platforms where your customers spend their time. Now that you have only a few social platforms, do some research! Yes, unfortunately, I cannot give you all the answers even though I would love to do so. Each platform has different recommended posting times and formats. They also may have different etiquette so read up on that. A well-known example of this is Reddiquette for Reddit. If you’re really short on time, try mastering just one social media first. Then slowly add more to your repertoire as your skills grow and your time investment shrinks. I am personally a bad example of this strategy. I chose instead to utilize multiple social platforms. The biggest reason for this is because of my business style. My business plan is to release new content weekly through my blog and streams. This content is then readily available to

Welcome to the Ideal Reverie. I am excited to have you here today. Today I wanted to go over 99designs, and I can’t speak for everyone, but personally, I am far off from artistic. While I can use Canva to do some basic touch-ups and color changes, I don’t have the chops to be a designer. I gave it my best go at creating a logo for my brand and quickly realized I was out of my realm for a few different reasons. The first is that despite doing some research, I didn’t have any training or practice regarding authentic design. The second is I can investigate the color theory and current big brands to see what works for them, but that doesn’t mean I could replicate it. The final reason is I was still struggling with what I wanted my logo to incorporate, and the amount of time I spent pondering on it should have been better utilized with something I was more attuned with. I had done some research into the costs of Fiverr, 99designs, as well as agencies and took into account a few different things. The first thing I considered, which I’m sure is essential to many people just starting their brands, is cost. I did not mind spending the money so much as I wanted to ensure I would be happy with the result afterward. The second is the quality of what I was receiving. Everyone knows the age-old adage of “You get what you pay for,” but that can be far from true with certain online services. I wanted a logo I would be happy and proud to share everywhere and with everyone. Finally, I wanted a logo that would work for the multiple parts of my brand now and my future plans. This logo would be a part of my brand forever if done correctly. While I am not opposed to rebranding if that need arose, I didn’t see a reason to plan for that when I wasn’t even done for the first time yet! All of this came together for me to take a chance with 99designs, and I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am with the results. Throughout this post, I will talk a little more about what 99designs is, the flow of the contests, and my experience after using the service. With that out of the way, let’s first move into a little bit more about 99designs – What is 99designs and how does it work For this post, I feel it’s vital to discuss a little bit more about what 99designs is and how it works. 99designs is a crowdsourced design platform where you can find creatives worldwide to help you with what you’re looking for. While I used it for my logo, they can also help you design websites, stationery, tattoos, and much more. I have only ever done the logo, so I will focus on that for this post. However, if you are looking for something else designed, check out their options and see if they can help. There are two ways you can get something designed on 99designs. The first way is essentially the same as if you were going to hire any other freelancer. They call it a 1-to-1 project. You can do this by clicking on designers and looking through their past work or going through the design library. The two design libraries can be found underneath design services. Choose either find a designer or discover inspiration. This is an excellent option if you have a concrete idea and want to find someone who has done similar work before. It can also be wonderful to look through all of the great designs if you’re looking for any inspiration. I spent more time doing that when I first found the site than I planned to. The other option, which is my favorite way to utilize it, is the contest option.  The contest version is exactly how it sounds. You hold a contest for people to enter, and you get to choose one of the designs. My opinion is that your logo should be something you’re excited about and you can’t wait for it to be designed perfectly. While some people end up stressing about this, that’s okay too. Just try not to make the process something you hate. That is a big reason I love the contest option. It phrases finding your perfect logo more like a game, and you are the one in control. There are a few options for the type of contests: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. There are similarities to all of them. The higher tier you buy, the more you receive and the more it costs. Each of the tiers has a minimum amount to qualify for the contest. You can pay more money than that to attempt to persuade more people to enter your contest. I will focus on the pricing for the logo contest, as that’s what I did. The cost of the bronze package is the cheapest, with prices starting at $299. Following that is silver, with the minimum for that being $499. Next up is gold, with the minimum going for $899. Finally, surprise surprise, is platinum rounding us off at $1299. Each of these packages comes with design concepts, the approximate amount depending on the package you chose. For the bronze package, it is 30, silver is 60, gold is 90, and platinum is 60. Now remember this is an approximation, so while some people may get less, others will get more. I was lucky enough to get much more, but we will review that later.  Next, each package comes with a money-back guarantee. This is one of the reasons I really like the idea of contests, as you have a safety net in case you don’t find what you’re looking for. To get your money back, you do need to give them a call, so there is no quick, easy