Celebrating 2 Years of Serve Me the Sky Digital

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Celebrating 2 Years of Serve Me the Sky Digital

Picking a business anniversary is a funny thing. There are many dates I could have chosen: June 2017, when I signed my first freelance client. July 2018, when I got my DBA. But the day I chose to celebrate is May 6th, because that’s when it felt most real. That was the first day I sat down to work for myself full-time after walking away from my stable day job.

When I celebrated this milestone last May, we were two months into a global pandemic that no one would have guessed we’d still be living through a year later. Running a business during a global pandemic is hard! It seemed that with many organizations, when times got tough, marketing was an easy thing to slash from the budget. To get me through a slow time, I picked up some part-time work as a contact tracer, which was fascinating and engaging. Business has been ramping back up, and I’m so excited about that!

In addition to running a business during a global pandemic, I also had to navigate doing so while helping care for my mother as she declined due to stage 4 cancer, then grieving and taking bereavement time while self-employed. This year was a lot to handle. I’m proud that my business is still standing here strong today, after a super difficult year.

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On Taking Bereavement Time as a Freelancer

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On Taking Bereavement Time as a Freelancer

This topic is unusual for a business blog where I typically talk about marketing and social media strategy, but I thought it would be interesting to explore and helpful for other freelancers going through similar situations. In late February, my grandma passed away at 93 years old, and in early April, my mom died of cancer at 59 years old. Hell of a way to start the year! Not working at a traditional company where I could check in with HR and get standard bereavement time, I was uncertain about how I would navigate taking time off to grieve. Here are a few things that worked for me over the past few months:

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How Many is Too Many Instagram Stories?

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How Many is Too Many Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories have been around for nearly five years now, and there’s still debate over how to utilize them well. One question my clients often ask is, how many is too many Instagram Stories? Personally, when I’m flipping through Stories, I’ll watch the ones where there are four or five long dashes at the top. When it comes to a person or business whose Stories have devolved into an endless row of tiny dots, I’ll swipe onto the next account because I don’t have the attention span for that! Everyone has their own preferences and arbitrary rules for Story posting frequency. One Digg writer argued that three Stories is the perfect number.

In the social media industry, the answer to so many questions is “it depends.” I could tell you that it depends when it comes to Story posting frequency, and to some extent it does, but there is great research on the topic that provides helpful guidance on how many Stories really is too many.

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7 Helpful Tools for Social Media

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7 Helpful Tools for Social Media

In order to be successful in your day-to-day social media management, it’s helpful to have an arsenal of handy tools to help you do your best work. These can be for scheduling, planning, or graphic design--there’s a lot that goes into making a great post! Today I’m sharing some of my favorite tools for crafting excellent social media content.

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How to Optimize Your Instagram Bio

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How to Optimize Your Instagram Bio

Writing a top-notch Instagram bio is both an art and a science. How do you craft something that will entice your target audience? That includes all the necessary information and is still concise and compelling? You only have 150 characters to do it! Today on the blog, we’re diving into best practices for optimizing your Instagram bio.

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What I Learned as Vice President of a Nonprofit Board

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What I Learned as Vice President of a Nonprofit Board

Around this time last year, I wrote a blog post reflecting on what I learned in my first year on a nonprofit board. The blog post was published just a few weeks before COVID shut down the world’s in-person activities. I never could have imagined what my second year on the Cameron Community Ministries Board would be like! I had just stepped into the role of Vice President of the Board, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Looking back, I want to share a little bit about what a Board VP does, what we worked on at Cameron in 2020, and what I learned along the way.

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How Long Should My Instagram Caption Be?

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How Long Should My Instagram Caption Be?

Determining how long your Instagram caption should be is an age-old dilemma. Okay, Instagram has only existed for eleven years, so maybe not quite “age-old.” Nonetheless, one of the most common concerns I hear from clients is, “How do I write a good caption? How long should my caption be?” People are stumped by the art of the caption! Today on the blog I’m breaking down Instagram caption length.

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5 Things I Learned in My First Year Running a Book Club

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5 Things I Learned in My First Year Running a Book Club

A few months before the pandemic struck, I thought to myself, “What if I launched my own book club?” I posted some polls on Twitter and Instagram to see if people would join a book club if I started one. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and I was thrilled! I started building a list of emails and before I knew it, I had 50+ names on my list.

Our first meetup was in February 2020 and we met in person at Writers & Books, an amazing literary arts nonprofit here in Rochester. Finding a place to meet was one of the hardest parts of organizing a book club at first! I reached out to many different spaces to see if they could accommodate a small group of 10-12 people, and lots of them wanted to charge a space rental fee. I proposed a partnership with Writers & Books where we encourage our book club members to shop at their new bookstore, Ampersand Books, in exchange for using their space, and they agreed! Due to the pandemic, we only met twice in person before switching to virtual meetups via Google Meet.

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A Conversation with Jackie Ortiz: Holding Space & Creating Community

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A Conversation with Jackie Ortiz: Holding Space & Creating Community

This is the 11th post in the “A Conversation With” series, where I interview talented folks about their areas of marketing expertise. You can read past entries in the series here.

This month, I interviewed Jackie Ortiz, a social media professional who currently does community at Doist and runs her own business, Sarap Tees. We discussed community management, lessons learned from the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, and how marketers can play a role in the pursuit of equity at their companies. I hope you enjoy her insights!

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How to Run a Social Media Giveaway

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How to Run a Social Media Giveaway

You’ve seen them before: the social media giveaway. They’re all over lately, especially on Instagram! Why would you want to give free products or services away, though? And if you do decide it’s the right move for your business, how do you execute on it effectively? We’re exploring all that and more on the blog today!

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