I’m your host Jenny Guy, and in late 2020 I had the privilege to sit down with two powerhouse Google employees, Julia Li and Bianca Jochimsen. They both know a thing or two about starting out as non-techies and rocking it in a tech world. Which is something quite a few content creators can identify with.

We discussed the root causes of imposter syndrome as well as specific strategies and action items to kick it to the curb.

Now let’s show imposter syndrome who’s boss

Helpful Resources

The Disciplined Pursuit of Less — An article to guide you upward in your career.
#IAmRemarkable — Google’s initiative empowering women and other underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond.

The post Be a Boss and Kick Out Imposter Syndrome with Julia Li and Bianca Jochimsen: Mediavine On Air Episode 14 appeared first on Mediavine.

Jennifer Borget from Cherish 365 joins Jenny Guy, our Director of Marketing, in a conversation on how to determine the branding of your images and what type of photography equipment to invest in based on your blogging needs.

Tune in to find out Jennifer’s tips and tricks to get better photos today! (Originally aired 02/11/2021)

Watch the video here or check out the transcript below.

Making Photography a Priority This Year

JENNY GUY: Happy Thursday. It is February 11. And since the last time we talked, that lovable groundhog/jerk-face Punxsutawney Phil gifted us with six more weeks of winter.

JENNIFER BORGET: Dang.

JENNY GUY: That revelation brought a great big duh from me because winter is on full display right outside my window here in Oklahoma, and I am not a fan. What is the weather like in your neck of the woods?

Say hi in the comments and tell us why you think cold weather is stupid, or if that’s just me. Maybe you love cold weather. I don’t want to hate on you if you love cold weather. Just say hi, and tell us what the weather’s like.

And as content creators ourselves at Mediavine, we are very well aware that it can be overwhelming to decide where to focus your limited time and energy. However, dedicating time to our topic today is a no-brainer.

Photography is relevant to pretty much all digital content creators regardless of niche. Improving your images pays dividends on your website and social media, which leads to more traffic which leads to more revenue. But how do we get those improvements? My guest today is the perfect person to show us the way.

Jennifer Borget is a former journalist turned award winning digital creator. At Cherish 365 she chronicles her life as a mom of three, covering everything from parenting to education to home to diversity and inclusion, all through the lens of encouraging others to cherish every day. Welcome to Teal Talk, Jennifer.

Thank you for joining us for today’s episode of Teal Talk. I’m Jenny Guy. I’m Mediavine’s Director of Marketing and your host on this show, all about the business of content creation. Sometimes we’re asked how we come up with so many different topics and guests for the show.

And the truth is, there is never a shortage of relevant topics for content creators because there are so many things that you guys are expected to know about. And all of them are essential. SEO, copywriting, video, taxes for small business owners, first-party data, the list just goes on and on and on.

JENNIFER BORGET: Hi. [LAUGHS]

JENNY GUY: Thank you so much–

JENNIFER BORGET: Hi, Jenny.

JENNY GUY: –for coming.

JENNIFER BORGET: Hi, Jenny. No, thanks for having me. I’m really excited.

JENNY GUY: I’m so excited, yep.

JENNIFER BORGET: And you’re always so informative so honored to be on this end. [LAUGHS]

JENNY GUY: Well, we’re honored to have you. We couldn’t ask for a better expert. If you guys have questions for Jennifer or me, post them in the comments. We will make sure that we mention them to her. OK, before I start quizzing Jennifer, I have a question for the audience that will help us guide this conversation.

What parts of photography do you wish you knew more about? Tell us in the comments. What are the things that you’re struggling with? And before– I’m going to go ahead and jump in. We heard in your bio that you have a very specific and clever way of weaving photography into even just your bio.

So tell us about your journey with content creation and photography. Your skills are very noted. You speak all over the blogging circuit back when we used to travel. And those skills have led you to some pretty impressive places like teaching for Canon and a viral post shared by none other than Oprah. So there is a lot of amazing stuff. Can you tell us how you got there from where you started?

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, I mean, so I started as a journalist. And I’ve just always been a storyteller, which I think of that has gotten a lot of us into blogging. We’re like telling stories one way or another, whether it’s our story through cooking or other skills and things that we enjoy.

So for me, it was a chance for me to share more about my life because so much of what I was doing on the journalism side was learning and sharing about other people. So this is a creative outlet for me and why I started my blog.

But what I learned in journalism through storytelling and visual storytelling, specifically with video, and I mean, a lot of that works the same with still photography. You have a lot of the same types of rules like rule of thirds and lighting.

And I know some people are intimidated by video, but I’m like, once you get photography down, it really translates easily the other direction either way, really. So yeah, I mean, I really enjoy it. My kids are my favorite subjects, and I think they’re really cute. So that makes taking pictures easy for me.

I think whatever your subject matter is, it’s probably what you’re leaning to and what you’re interested in. And that makes taking pictures of that really fun. And for me making what I’m doing fine is top priority for my work. So I think it’s important to remember that when we’re thinking about these photography tips.

I may be talking about using portraits and people as an example. But if you’re a food photographer into food or cooking, maybe you want to think about it that way.

JENNY GUY: Great answer. You are definitely not b– I mean, you’re probably are biased about your kids, but they are–

JENNIFER BORGET: I’m totally biased!

JENNY GUY: –absolutely–

JENNIFER BORGET: [LAUGHS]

JENNY GUY: –adorable. No, but you’re also not wrong. That’s a good– I’ve creeped on your Instagram. I’ve seen a lot of your stuff. Let’s share Jennifer’s Instagram. She’s not wrong. Her kids are fricking adorable. So they are easy, but your photography is next level.

And we’ve got so many questions from people. We’ve got people asking about composition with backgrounds, especially with very limited space. We’re definitely going to talk about composition. We’re going to talk about picking a camera lens that’s not $1 million.

Do I need an elaborate set fancy camera to create images that are impactful and fit the current day expectations? iPhone camera versus DSLR, so many things. We’re going to get to all of them.

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, those are good.

JENNY GUY: But let’s start with more of a basic question about photography in general. I think we can all agree, all of us content creators and anyone that consumes content as well that photography is an intrinsic part of a website.

It is very much everything that we see. And it’s the most visual element most of the time, unless you’re bringing a lot of video that people have on the site. So how does photography influence our branding? And more specifically, should branding influence photography or the other way around?

JENNIFER BORGET: I think they kind of go hand in hand. I think when we’re looking into branding, how big is photography going to be a part of your br– photography is going to be a part of your brand. What type of photography, may be where the influence part comes in.

So for me, I rarely use stock photography. It’s not my thing. So I feel like a part of my branding is the lifestyle images that you see of my family. It’s so interwoven together. But it doesn’t have to be like that for everyone.

If we have a more magazine style blog or something else or obviously if you have a food blog, you’re probably taking pictures of your own food. But it has more of maybe a magazine stock kind of feel to it. So I think it definitely can influence your branding, but I don’t think that we have to keep ourselves in a box.

For instance, when I first was blogging and getting into photography, I mean you’d scroll to my feed and you would see these striking images. And that is what drew you to my feed. But now it’s kind of like a dime a dozen.

A lot of people have great photography. What am I adding to those photos and thinking about the caption and thinking about how that goes hand in hand with your brand. So I think just having an idea of what you want people to see and how you want them to feel when they come to your website and how you want them to remember you, that is kind of what you want to have in mind when you’re thinking–

If you’re starting from scratch or if you’re maybe thinking of starting over, that’s what you want to think about. How do you want people to feel? What do you want them to see? What do you want them to remember about your images? Because like you said, I mean, every site is going to have some kinds of pictures or images on it.

JENNY GUY: I love what you said there because saying that really being intentional and thinking about how you want people to feel when they come to your site, I think that is so important. And I love that. That’s a great way to start out with when you’re starting over.

But also now, even if you’re just looking– because I think once you get intentional and you think about the way you want people to feel, there’s nothing to stop you from working towards that aesthetic in your photography at any point in your journey.

If you feel like your photos aren’t matching what you were wanting to be putting out, how do you get there? OK, so how do you pick what your style is? And can you use data? Can you stats and analytics to help you figure out what type of photos you need to be taking? What type of pictures work for you?

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, I think you can. I mean, I think with so many different platforms, there’s different types of photos that will perform differently on different things. So they start on our blog, and there’s one. And maybe you’ll have a family photo or something, and then maybe later on in your post, you have a close-up of one child.

What’s the topic of the post and what are you doing? And I think some of those images will perform differently on different platforms that we’re sharing our blog to. I think about that with Pinterest. OK, well, faces, I love photography with faces and people looking at the camera and whatnot, but that doesn’t always perform as well on Pinterest.

Sometimes people like the more stock look, like not putting a specific person with your image. So I might decide to make my pin graphic with not a family photo looking straight forward but something where we’re more candid and not engaging with the camera.

But then on Instagram, it’s the opposite. They love seeing you looking at the camera and feeling like, oh, here’s someone looking at me as you’re scrolling by, and that makes them stop. So I’m intentional when I’m wanting to get people to come over and read my blog post.

I have something in my Instagram image that is going to grab people and get them interested in looking and reading more. So I think it’s good to have a variety but also– yeah, I mean, I just think it’s good to have a variety and to look at, if you’re pin-testing, like, OK, I’m going to try this and see how this works and how people respond to this.

And same with on Instagram and looking at your analytics there and then which is driving more traffic to your site and how can you compare those things.

JENNY GUY: That’s a great question. And I want to dive in more about how you’re choosing a static. But there are so many questions, and we’re getting so much. So I kind of want to skip ahead. And I want to talk a little bit about gear, because that seems to be a big question.

So we can’t have a conversation about photography without talking about gear. Everybody always–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNIFER BORGET: Right.

JENNY GUY: –gear, because that stuff is real expensive. It doesn’t take long to figure out that photography is a very expensive hobby. And when you become a content creator, it’s an expensive part of everything that you’re doing.

So what is enough to start with and then where are good places to invest if you’re ready to make an upgrade? And we had some very specific questions about a DSLR versus an iPhone. Is it possible to get great stuff with an iPhone?

JENNIFER BORGET: So absolutely, it’s possible to get great stuff with an iPhone. I think it just depends what you’re doing and what your goal is. My iPhone is like 100% of my Instagram stories’ content and for a lot of my selfies. But adding real life or life to my images is a big thing.

So my iPhone, I think, comes in handy when I’m going for a very in-the-moment type of capture and share. And that’s fine, and it works especially for social media. But the blog– I rarely use iPhone images on my blog. I mean that’s just me. I do. Sometimes if it’s something I’ve already edited and fixed up for Instagram, I might– hey, just repurpose it and use it for the blog.

But a lot of my blog images are very intentional. And I’m taking the pictures on my camera, on my DSLR, and the quality is really good and I know how to use my gear to make it look exactly how I want it to look. So I mean, you don’t have to have a super expensive top of the line full frame DSLR.

You can get like a Canon Rebel is my favorite starter camera. You don’t even have to get the latest and greatest line. You can get a couple older versions of it. And it works great. And it’s under $1,000. I think it’s even maybe around $500. It’s not that much, I mean relatively speaking, compared to–

JENNY GUY: Sure.

JENNIFER BORGET: –other– it can be very expensive. And then the first thing that they could get is the– they call it the nifty 50. It’s a 50-millimeter lens. It’s under $100 or right around $100. And it takes gorgeous portraits. I think it works really good for food if you can get a good distance away from it.

But it’s really good for capturing product and branded work or anything that you’re crafting. As long as you have some space to back away, it’s going to work really well because it allows you a lot of freedom to take pictures when you maybe don’t have the best lighting all the time.

JENNY GUY: That is very helpful. And we’re going to talk about lighting in a second. So just to run that down, and can we actually post in the comments what she said? You said a nifty 50 lens is around $50, but then what was the–

JENNIFER BORGET: Oh, sorry. So it’s 50-millimeter lens for $100. So it’s kind of like–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNY GUY: 50-millimeter lens for $100.

JENNIFER BORGET: Mm-hmm.

JENNY GUY: Got it. And then the camera was?

JENNIFER BORGET: Canon Rebel is my favorite starter camera.

JENNY GUY: Canon Rebel.

JENNIFER BORGET: Mm-hmm.

JENNY GUY: OK, fantastic. Both great recommendations. Are there any places that you recommend to go look for information about camera gear? Are there any favorite blogs or websites? We shared a post from your website that talks about choosing a great camera, but are there any–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNIFER BORGET: Oh, great. Yeah, that was great. [LAUGHS]

JENNY GUY: Yes, come on.

JENNIFER BORGET: That one, and I have a lens one too.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic.

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, but I mean, they’re always updating and changing, right? So I really like looking at reviews on– let’s see, Adorama is a good site. I’m trying to think of how to spell it. But it’s kind of like a B&H type camera store, but I like that site for looking at a bunch of different gear.

And you can select different models and compare features and stuff. Clickin Moms I think has some good resources on how to use your camera and good tips and stuff from different photographers and moms who have been learning how to use their gear. Years and years of archives and stuff.

So those are some good places to look and compare things. And then the blog post that you guys shared of mine are good too for just breaking down exactly what things mean and what they do and why I like them in case it’s overwhelming seeing all of the different stuff and trying to decide on an option.

JENNY GUY: Oh, why, it is overwhelming. I looked at it before and it’s really difficult to try to– and it’s really refreshing to hear that it doesn’t have to be bigger, better, always the most expensive. So thank you for sharing those resources.

Because it is intimidating, and it can be cost prohibitive, especially if you don’t know that you’re going to be great at it. So do you want to put a whole lot of money in– like I was talking about before I started the conversation with you, there are so many places for content creators to spend their money, their time, their–

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, right.

JENNY GUY: So it’s– so why–

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, investing. Yeah.

JENNY GUY: I wanted to ask you just before we go on to the next question, what made you pick photography? And what makes you think that it’s a place– why would you advocate for photography to be a place where content creators spend time?

JENNIFER BORGET: I think because so much of what people consume and what we consume is visual, and unless you’re on like Clubhouse, a platform that is completely not visual at all, I mean everything else has some kind of visual component. And you can hire a photographer.

It’s like, yes, it’s something you can hire out. But I feel like it’s kind of becoming financially independent or something like– if you want to become as independent as possible, if worse came to worse, you had to slash, slash, slash, slash things, things that you’re outsourcing, I feel like photography is something that is nice to always have as a fallback.
Because you’re always going to need images. And if you have those skills and you need to save money and cut back on a photographer one month, it’s nice knowing that you can do it yourself.

And I mean, I personally think it’s really fun and it’s great because it goes into more than just your business if you want to, more than just your website, you can use those skills for your family and for friends or others and trading with people. It’s just a skill that’s very useful beyond just for the website.

JENNY GUY: And if you get great at it, it’s always a great side hustle too. A place to hire–

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, honestly, I was debating saying that, but I mean, it’s true. I’ve totally thought that, like, OK, if this starts going down or this– I could always– it is. It’s a great side hustle, because especially in the fall, people are always looking for family pictures. And just knowing how to work it, it’s–

I mean, I’m not trying to undercut the photography market out there, but I mean it’s a skill. It’s a really good skill.

JENNY GUY: And people in the content creation industry a lot of times are looking to outsource food photography, all sorts of stuff. They’re places to go if you–

JENNIFER BORGET: Totally.

JENNY GUY: If you can get good at this. So for people that already have gotten past maybe the basics, do you have any special things that you’d suggest to add to kind of up your game, maybe one or two special gadgets or tools?

JENNIFER BORGET: It would be lenses. When people are deciding on what to upgrade and what to get, I would always say glass before body. Just upgrade your lens before you worry about upgrading the body of your camera. Because you can do so much more with a different style of lens.

So I would say, so the 50-millimeter is like a quick affordable upgrade. Next, I would look for a wider angle upgrade. One that I really like that– LaShawn, I know you had her on here not too long ago, I’ve been–

JENNY GUY: Yeah, she’s good.

JENNIFER BORGET: –telling her for years about this lens that I love. It’s a 17 to 40-millimeter lens. It’s a zoom lens, so you can shoot in this– close as 45, I think, and then as far as 17. So that is going to give you a lot of variety if you are a travel photographer or– not right now, I know, but– or if you’re a food photographer, lifestyle, that’s just going to widen your horizon on the type of things you can take pictures of.

So definitely a wide-angle lens or a zoom. Some people really like the static lenses but I really love zoom lenses. So that’s one that I would invest in for sure. And then looking like the aftermarket, because you don’t have to pay brand new prices all the time. If someone took care of their lens, you can buy used and save some money that way.

Yeah, that would probably be the main thing I would say is upgrading that. And then depending on what style of photography, I would put you in one direction or the other if you should get a longer portrait lens or a 35-millimeter wide-angle lens for food.

People in the comments, are they saying what kind of stuff they take pictures of or what kind of photography they are–

JENNY GUY: No, that’s a great question. Guys, tell us what type of photography you’re doing. Tell us what your niche is. Are you wanting to take more people, animals, food, travel?

JENNIFER BORGET: I don’t like food, like– I mean, I love food, but food photography is not my thing at all. So I don’t have a 35-millimeter lens, but that is a favorite for a lot of food photographers. So I tend to have a lot more of the portrait style, longer lenses because I’m taking pictures of people and things far away or macro, up close, and things like that.

JENNY GUY: We’re getting– OK, we’ve got– Michelle said food and some travel. Camilla says, I do food. Lynn says, crafts, how-tos, and finished products. So we’ve got kind of the gamut here of lenses–

JENNIFER BORGET: OK. Yeah, OK, great. So yeah, a lot of those I would look into the 35-millimeter lens. Oh really? OK. I was down in the comments now. OK, Camilla likes the 100. That is one of my favorite lenses. I love it for portraits, and it’s great for really, really close up– like a macro lens, you can get really close to details.

I think that would be really great for crafting if she says she does crafts. And she says she loves food so I don’t– I hardly even look at pictures of food, because I’m like–

JENNY GUY: I feel it.

JENNIFER BORGET: –it stresses me out. Like that is–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNY GUY: We all have our own thing.

JENNIFER BORGET: That is talent, like the flat lays and everything. That’s funny, she hates photographing people. And it doesn’t smile. [LAUGHS]

JENNY GUY: Lynn, that’s–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNIFER BORGET: That’s so funny. I know.

JENNY GUY: No. I mean, it’s true. It’s not a lie.

JENNIFER BORGET: It’s true.

JENNY GUY: Camilla said, yeah, you were talking about my fav lens is a 100-millimeter. And she does food. So lots of interesting–

JENNIFER BORGET: So that could be here. Because if that works for food– because that would be the only reason I wouldn’t recommend it is like, oh, I don’t know if food photography people use it for that. If she does, that surprises me because I would think that you’d want a wider lens for that. But like I said, I don’t photograph food much at all.

Because it’s like, click with my phone really quick, but that is a great lens for a portrait, gorgeous portrait. It’s my favorite, favorite one. It’s smooth, buttery, very striking images with that lens. So if it works for food too, that could be a good one to put on your wish list.

JENNY GUY: Other things that we want to talk about our purchasing or finding is setting the scene for a great photo with props, background, and lighting. So how do you use all of those things to help set your scene and really communicate your branding with your images? And then do you have any favorite places to buy props and backgrounds?

JENNIFER BORGET: So with my brand, I try to go for lifestyle, organic, just– I don’t want to say candid, because it’s not always candid. But very minimal setup is what I go for. So the most I’ll try to do usually is like get somebody near a window or something where I’m going to get great natural light.

Of course, I do have umbrella lights and ring lights and things which come in handy for when you need a studio setup. So I used those a lot when I did my stop motion videos when Aliyah was a little baby. And some of those went viral. And, I mean, I needed static light that wasn’t going to change.

Window daylight would not work for that because it’s taking several pictures over a long period of time. And the sun is going to change and that doesn’t work. So static light– if you have food, crafts, things like that, you’re going to want static light. So I really like just– I mean, I do not go all out with expensive, like hundreds and hundreds of–

I got a maybe $200 light setup that had three stands. It came up with the stands, umbrellas, lights. If you don’t like the bulbs that come with it, you can switch them out for more daylight. So if you’re going to choose which lighting to get, I would go for the daylight coloring versus the warm light and get those bulbs in there.

I think it was like maybe $160 or something. It was not much. And that has lasted me for years. Yeah, so that’s something I would invest in. A ring light if you’re doing lots of video or pictures of yourself. I think ring lights are good, especially if you have to record a lot of content at night or if you don’t have the daylight or if you don’t have a good window light. A ring light is really good for that.

Yeah, so those are things– backgrounds, I don’t have many backgrounds anymore. I’m trying to think, I don’t anymore. But if you’re doing crafts and food, I mean, you don’t need like this whole prop on your wall. You can just get little slabs of things at craft stores and things and make it look like that’s your background. That’s really nice.

But when it comes to people, I’m not investing in it big. We’ll just find a nice wall inside or outside or something that works for a background.

JENNY GUY: Love hearing that you’re going around and finding things as you go along. So can you give tips for when you’re out traveling? If you’re doing travel or you’re doing people or you’re even doing food, what types of stuff are you looking to shoot up against? What backgrounds are you looking for in your natural habitat?

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, so something that’s not too busy in the background is usually what I’m going for, unless I’m going for something busy. But usually I want something that’s not very distracting away from the main image that I’m trying to capture.

So if I’m capturing a moment of my kids playing a game or something like that, I want to make sure that the background isn’t super cluttered. I mean, our house is always cluttered. So I’m either moving stuff out of the way or I’m stopping down my f-stop so that it’s really blurry in the background and you know there’s something there but you don’t know what it is. And it’s not distracting.

So that’s usually what I’m trying to do. I’m a very playful brand, mine’s very light. a I’m not necessarily the– what’s the word that people look for? Like the picture-perfect, aspirational–

JENNY GUY: Totally, yeah.

JENNIFER BORGET: –I’m not very aspirational.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNIFER BORGET: I’m more real, not overly messy. My office is a disaster right now so I’m not going to purposely show that unless I’m trying to make a point.

JENNY GUY: [LAUGHS]

JENNIFER BORGET: But I’m not the aspirational, all white this and that– but that’s not my brand. So I think those things really can come into play. I know some different influencers and people will– their brand is to have props for every picture. They have backgrounds and balloons and props and things that they’re bringing in for their images.

But I knew that wasn’t going to work for me because that takes way too much planning. And I’d rather just capture a beautiful image that fits more with what I’m going for. So for me, that’s not too cluttered but traditional.
There’s so much you can change– if your lifestyle brand and you’re looking for pictures you can take, I mean, maybe you’re looking at an image one direction but there’s all that stuff on the side. What if you shifted everything a little bit this way? That can completely change the image.

So I would just say be aware of what’s around and think about different angles, because if you shift this way, that changes things. If you come down and take a picture from below and you’re shooting up more, or if standing higher and shooting down, all of those are completely different images. So just being aware of how you’re going to feel when you take that picture and how you want others to feel.

JENNY GUY: Very helpful. So we got a question in advance. You touched on it a little bit, but on lighting. We could easily spend an entire episode talking about lighting because it’s a big topic in photography, but Senn asked us on Twitter, I live in Canada, where we have a lot of overcast days in winter. How can I continue to make beautiful photos despite that?

JENNIFER BORGET: So OK, I think– and I don’t know if she’s taking pictures inside or outside– if outside, overcast days are my favorite days to take pictures. I love overcast days. It’s like the lighting is diffused so beautifully. You don’t have to worry about shadows. You don’t have to worry about squinting.

That actually makes for gorgeous pictures, unless you’re shooting the sky. If you’re shooting the sky, yeah, that’s probably not as pretty to have a gray sky. But if that’s your goal and you’re looking for a blue sky, and you’re like, oh, it’s overcast, you can do that and edit.

There are so many apps out there now where you can swap the sky or change the background and things like that. But photographing anything else besides the sky, I think, is beautiful on overcast days because you don’t have to worry about diffusers and filters and things like that.

If you’re inside and it darkens your room and stuff so much more, that is really tough. But something I would try to do is change out all of your lights in your house, instead of that tungsten yellow to a white light, to a sunlight. I think that automatically will brighten up your house more.

And if you have them in all of your different areas of light, it’s going to help from the shadows and things like that. You can get dimmer switches to help. I like doing as much as I can like that preemptively so that I’m not having to bust out my lighting and set everything up.

So those are some things that I would do. Yeah, if she’s taking pictures outside, I would say enjoy it and take advantage, because overcast days are so much easier to take pictures on than super sunny days.

JENNY GUY: I love that. OK, we’ve got a couple other questions. We’ll get there in a second. Are there any other top lighting tips? And then pretty much for what you’re saying in terms of lighting, your top tip is switching out your bulbs, having more natural sunlight than that yellow light, and doing the same thing with the lighting equipment.

You said you didn’t really go all in on investing on major lighting equipment. You bought one set and then replaced the bulbs. Is that your top tip pretty much for lighting?

JENNIFER BORGET: OK, I’m looking now at the top tips for finding the right light. I mean, you’re going to find the best light near your windows. And that is going to just change everything with your pictures. If you’re close to a window, you can just angle yourself like–

I mean, my favorite place to put my kids if I’m taking a picture of them is to position myself the windows here, and then I’m here and they are here. So my back is to the window, and I’m photographing them. And the light is just hitting them right in the face. So I mean, your best light in your house– forget the light bulbs and everything else, your best light is going to be near the windows for sure.

And if it’s dark like I have some spaces in my house that are really dark, I’ll even open a door to the outside and just let some more of light come in for a little bit because natural light is going to be your best light for sure.

And then when you get into the overcast days inside and things like that, that’s when those other tips like switching out bulbs and stuff will help a little bit before you have to invest in additional lighting equipment.

JENNY GUY: Very helpful. OK, we’ve got a question here. Toni Harvey says, I have a Sony mirrorless a6000 with a 16 to 50-millimeter kit lens and a 55 to 210-millimeter lens. I want something in the middle that will allow more zoom than the 16 to 50 but less than the 55 to 210 so I can shoot low stop images of DIY projects in my home office. Any suggestions?

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, so my favorite lens for a long time was like a 28 to 75 or– so it’s going to be different for different brands. That was a Tamron lens that I bought for my Canon. But I think it comes in like 35 to 75 or 25 to 75, something like that, in different versions.

So I would look for something like that. Mine was a 2.8. So it does have a lower f-stop. I mean it’s not a 1.4 or a 1.8 but 2.8 usually gets me really good focal and also lets in for a lot of light without having to stop too high. And then you still get a better zoom range.

So I would look for something like that for your Sony. I’m not as familiar with their lineup, or maybe if you can use one of their compatibility brackets maybe you could put one of the Canon ones on it too.

JENNY GUY: Excellent. That helped. OK, I want to jump to another topic, editing. You have already mentioned that there are so many apps out there that can change the sky, very true. Do you have favorite tools and software that you would recommend? And maybe for people at different levels, if there’s a good beginner and then there’s a good more advanced one too, that would be really helpful.

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, so I have so many apps on my phone, but the ones that I’m always going to are– Snapseed is my favorite one. I go to that for adjusting the curves and the brightness and the highlights and things like that, just taking a picture and making the tweaks if I don’t want to have to bring it on to my computer.

And then A Color Story is another one that I like that has different filters, but I really like– there’s little things that you can buy for– it’s free, and then it’s like, OK, buy this pack for $2.99 or whatever. So I did that for some of the things like sun flares.

And they have them for all sorts of– they have skies and stuff like that too. So that’s another app that I like. Adobe I think also has one that works. That’s a similar type of thing. So those are a handful of my favorites. And then Snapseed has a little retouch area too that I like.

JENNY GUY: Oh, nice.

JENNIFER BORGET: –like to use. Yeah. So those are my go-to apps. I mean, there are so many out there. I try not to do anything that I have to pay a membership for but those that get you pretty far.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. And are there any other tips you can give us on editing? I know it’s a big thing. How is your workflow? How do you edit? How does it work for you?

JENNIFER BORGET: Usually take all of my pictures and then I just import them on my computer. A lot of people like to use Lightroom to edit. I edit all my pictures in Photoshop. So my Lightroom equivalent is like Camera Raw. And there, I’ll go through and just automatically light up the vibrance because my images, I like to be very vibrant and colorful.

I’ll usually try to take my pictures a little brighter than I need knowing that I can dim them a little bit if I want. So I’ll usually lower the highlights a little bit so that it’s not too white and bright on the face. I dim that a little bit.
And then I open it up and then I’ll tweak the contrast and things like that and get my images. I have actions saved that I’ll just run through some of my pictures so that I know they all fit with my branding and theme.

So it doesn’t take very long, but I guess one step I missed in between– once I put them on my computer, I go through because I take way more pictures than I need and then I rate my favorites. So I go through really quick and see which ones catch my eye and give them like a four or five-star rating.

And then I go back there again and then see if there’s any I missed. And then I narrow down and then maybe there’s five that I’ll pick and then edit down and stuff. So that’s usually what I do. And then I resize it to be optimized for my websites and save it and then upload it to my blog.

So that’s usually my process. I know there’s a bunch of different ways to do it. But I try to keep all of my pictures organized as I go because it makes it so much easier when you need to go back later and find– I kind of feel like I have my own stock library, where oh, I need something–

I’m talking about movies or watching– movie night, like, let me search movies. And then things pop up, and I can see other images I’ve taken in the past. So the more organized you are as you’re uploading, it helps later on.

JENNY GUY: We’re going to talk a little bit more about organization here in a second. But I wanted to ask you, how many pictures are you taking for blog posts? Do you have a set number that you do, or what are you shooting for as a goal?

JENNIFER BORGET: That’s a good question. It kind of depends on the post, I guess. If it’s a post where I know I’m going to have graphics and other things involved in it, then I maybe won’t have as many pictures. I always have at least one, but I love when I have three.

If it’s a list, then I try to have one for each item. So it kind of just depends a little bit but always at least one. But I’m like, if I’m taking pictures for a blog post then I’m like, I might as well take a few variety. And usually on my blog I like horizontal, but then on Instagram I like vertical.

So I’m taking a little bit of variety, and I know that I can stick a few in. I will just stick some extra pictures there. So I mean, I guess it depends how long the blog post is and stuff. So I don’t really have a set goal usually, unless I know it’s like, OK, I’m talking about this. And I have four main points, so I want a picture of each point. That would be the only time that I set a goal going into my shoot.

JENNY GUY: Another question in that area is, are you writing your post first and then taking the pictures or are you–

JENNIFER BORGET: Oh, that’s a really good question. I’ve tried it both ways. I can’t say that I have to do it this way.

JENNY GUY: Interesting.

JENNIFER BORGET: Because it really depends. Sometimes the words just come to– the way that I blog and how I blog, it’s more like a journal. And then tips and stuff are secondary. I’m getting better at that now. Now with Mediavine and like right now, like, OK, let me make more obtainable stuff than just my life.

And so I guess with a lot of my list posts and things that are kind of more for Pinterest, I might have the post written before I go and take pictures. Or if it’s like this passionate post where the words are just coming out of me, I’ll just write, write, write, write, write. But a lot of times it’s not like, oh, let me go take a picture to go with this, because I usually have something somewhere–

JENNY GUY: Interesting.

JENNIFER BORGET: –in my archives that works. But then sometimes I’m just taking pictures of my kids or I’m taking pictures for a brand or doing something else. And then I’m like, OK, throw away the package, the brand. Let me take a few more and then I’ll use that for a blog post. So I don’t really have to do it one way or the other. It kind of depends on the circumstance.

JENNY GUY: I love hearing– I’m excited to get more into that here in a second about your filing system and how you keep everything organized. Because it sounds like once you go to the trouble of setting up a photo shoot, even though it’s not as big a deal for you, but if you go to that trouble and you have everyone there, then you’re doing as much as you can to maximize the amount of shots that you get in different places.

JENNIFER BORGET: Yes. Yes, absolute– like today for this, I was like, OK, I’m doing my hair and getting makeup on. So I go, let me make sure that I’m taking some pictures while I’m actually dressed and not wearing my robe and my hair is down, like let’s capitalize on this and get a little bit of content.

Yeah, that’s definitely something that I’m trying to be better at this year. Because I realized, looking through some of my pictures a couple of years ago– I was going back through, and I was like, oh, man, so much of my work was for friends. And that was when I was taking pictures, and this picture is cute but we’re holding a box of cereal or whatever, which is OK.

JENNY GUY: Right.

JENNIFER BORGET: But, I mean, now I’m getting better at, OK, now set that aside and let’s just take a few more. And it’s nice because later on– and it’s so easy to just throw in an extra picture for a blog post or for a social media update or something like that, just to have that extra content.

And it took no extra time, because you’re already ready and set up and you already have your lighting as the way you want it and everything. You can just take a couple extra pictures. And it definitely saves time.

JENNY GUY: I’m actually curious to know about our audience too. Do you take your pictures first and then write your content, or are you writing your content and then taking your pictures? I want to know just for curiosity’s sake. Mediavine’s–

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, me too.

JENNY GUY: –media relations specialist, Alicia, just said, I snap and then write. She said now she’s intrigued about the other way around and what that’s like. She does a lot of travel so that makes sense. OK, we’ve got awesome images. We’ve got our lighting. We’ve got our gear. We’ve got editing. We’ve got all that stuff done. Now, we’re ready to share it.

And you mentioned a concept that I was really interested in, which is engagement goal. I want to know about captioning, and you said that’s such an important part number. No, It’s not enough just to have great photos. You need a lot of stuff to go along with it to really grab people. So tell us your strategies, please.

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, for sure. So I mean, sometimes I just get a picture that I know is going to do really well. And I’m like, OK, I’m not going to post it right away. I’m going to save it for a time or a day when I know I have the perfect caption to go with that.

And sometimes it’s the other way around like, oh, this is news of the day. This is hot. I want to jump on this and write about it. What pictures do I have that I could use? Or what’s a picture that I could run out and take really quick? So I mean, captioning like– there are so many different thingsout there that you see people doing, like starting with a question or–

I’m thinking Instagram specifically for captioning, starting with the question or like double tap if, getting that engagement right away. For me, it’s like the thing that I’ve noticed for my audience that grabs them is some kind of story like, I remember when dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, or a quote like, I can’t believe you said that, my daughter told me when dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, just starting something– kind of thinking if you’re opening the first page of a book and you’re deciding if this interests you.

It’s kind of like that. Like how are you going to grab people right away? So for me I’m noticing it’s storytelling, really, really works and grabs people. So those are some of the things that I do.

And then at the end of my caption, I do try to open some kind of question or some kind of call to action, whether it’s like read more here or head to my stories or tell me what you think or have you ever dah, dah, dah, dah? That’s usually what I try to do and what I’ve noticed lately is helping me a little bit.

JENNY GUY: We all know engagement is so important. And especially on social media with all the algorithms, you want to get the engagement. So how often are you posting on Instagram? You mentioned LaShawn earlier. She posts so much, so many times a day. She is an Instagram whisperer. And how often are you posting? And how much time are you spending responding with your engaged audience?

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, so I usually post Monday through Friday is kind of my goal depending on how much sponsored content I’m doing and what season we’re in. So I usually have my sponsored content scheduled like, OK, Tuesday, Thursday. Or if I’m going to do Monday, Wednesday, or Monday, Wednesday, Friday or something.

And then I try to make sure I have other stuff to buffer so it’s not like back-to-back sponsored content. If I know I have two sponsors in a week, then I know I’m going to have three non-sponsored. So it’s going to be a full week of five days’ posting. And that’s not counting stories, where I feel like I’m always trying to feed that hamster wheel.

And so I’m getting better. I’ve noticed with planning, just looking ahead, looking at things like, what day is it– I’m trying to remember the website. I have it bookmarked. But it’s like, every day it’s some kind of national holiday. So–

JENNY GUY: Very true.

JENNIFER BORGET: –I would go and look ahead, and it’s like, OK, National Ice Cream Day or Donut Day or Say Hi to Your Best Friend Day or Your Dog’s Friend Day or whatever. I’ll look at the beginning of the month and see and take note of what’s happening. That way I know I’m ahead of it, and I can schedule my stuff around that even if nothing exciting happened in my life or if I don’t have a blog post to share.

Like, OK, today’s World Kindness Day, or World Kindness Day is next week so let me write this out and think of a cute picture that I already have saved of my kids hugging or something. And then I can have some kind of caption that’s helpful. You’re ahead of it. You have time to– if you want it–

Now, a big thing that’s helping people is having a slide that has text on it, maybe a quote or something that’s sharable. So looking ahead has helped me a lot, just being prepared– for instance, MLK Day, I knew day of, everyone would be sharing about MLK Day.

So this year, I posted the day before on Sunday, the night. I didn’t do it way early. I did it late at night around 11 o’clock. And I posted about like MLK Day and books and a blog post with a list of books and all this stuff. And it did great. It kicked off at night. And I think it got people like, oh yeah, today. We’re doing this thing.

JENNY GUY: It’s tomorrow, yay.

JENNIFER BORGET: So that’s a little trick that I learned this year, kind of just– I’m not a super, super organized person. But that’s a little thing that has helped me feel way more organized, just kind of being aware of what’s coming up and knowing that like, OK. I can throw something in here.

And since it fits, it’s timely, people are more likely to share it also. And I’m sure a lot of people here have crafts and food and other things that can tie into these different types of days, or it kind of makes you think creatively of how you can reshare some of your content.

JENNY GUY: I’m obsessed with the idea of posting right before, the night before. Because you’re jumping on that bandwagon. And plus–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNIFER BORGET: Right.

JENNY GUY: –I don’t know, everyone I talk to scrolls first– sometimes they’ll scroll first thing in the morning when they’re on the Peloton or when they’re just getting out of bed.

They’re going to start doing– they’ll allow themselves 15, 20 minutes of scroll. And your post is there greeting people as soon as they get up.

JENNIFER BORGET: Right.

JENNY GUY: I love that. So smart.

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: OK, so let’s do– we’ve got just a little bit of time left. I want to talk about your organizational system and how you back up, how you sort things, and then the way that you have things set up so you can reuse, recycle your pictures.

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, so the way that I organize is just like every year I start a new Photos folder on my computer. I don’t use iPhoto. I just found it like– it’s hard to access in my Finder– like I have to go into that app. I prefer just to be able to search what I’m looking for in my Finder. I have a Mac.

So I always start like, OK, 2021, and then January 2021. And then in that month, I have each event that I’m taking pictures for. So if I’m doing three-branded shoots one day, all of those will be in one folder. Like, OK, today I shot for this, this, and this. And then if I did some candid photos, those will all be in that same folder like just–

If we’re wearing the same outfits, it’s in the same folder pretty much. And that’s how I organize per month. So I do year, month, events. And then when the month’s over, I start a new one. At the end of the year what I like to do is go back into all those folders. End of the month would be ideal, but sometimes end of the year is my cutoff, and just delete all the extras that I didn’t edit, didn’t like, don’t need just to free up some space.

And then I’m left with my favorites. And then I can go back in. And if I want to add little tags to my photos, I always try to title my events and my pictures with as much– kind of like you’re thinking alt tags or something, just words that I know I might be searching for later like family photo, movies or Lee-Lee, happy, or swings, outside playing.

Just little things that will– like the person’s name and maybe what they were doing and what the mood is, and things that I think I might be searching for later. So it’s pretty easy for me to go back and find those later.

Like yesterday, I posted something on Instagram yesterday and I was like, oh, I need a picture that’s striking with me and one of the kids.

And I was like, oh, I know. I have some mommy and me pictures. So I just searched mommy and me. And I came up with all of them, and I found the exact one I was looking for. So that’s kind of how I try to organize my stuff. And that’s been pretty helpful for me.

JENNY GUY: Really helpful. Loving the– Yeah, the alt tags idea is super helpful, because you’re not going to be like, I remember back in February of 2019 we were having popcorn. And I need a popcorn pic. But if you saved it under movie night–

JENNIFER BORGET: Exactly

JENNY GUY: –of course, that, you’ll find. Yes.

JENNIFER BORGET: Right. Right. Yeah.

JENNY GUY: OK, Michelle–

JENNIFER BORGET: So I try to change the titles from the numbered photos to a theme, yeah.

JENNY GUY: Very helpful. Michelle Price said, deleting photos? What?
[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: I mean to me, that sounds like a very healthy way to like turn the page, turn the calendar, and just delete whatever the extraneous–

JENNIFER BORGET: I mean, I try to save bad photos. I kind of think like, what will I need later? I was taking pictures of my youngest last week. And she was smiling in all these photos but in one picture she just had the biggest frown, the biggest frown. And it was so cute, and I know–
It was for a brand. I’m like I’m not including this picture, but she didn’t– there wasn’t any product or anything she was holding. So I’m like, OK, I’m not sending this to them but this will work perfect someday for something. [LAUGHS] It’s going to be great.

So that’s one that I wouldn’t delete. It’s not for the event that I was looking for, but I know it’s an image I will be looking for later. So I’ll save it as like pout-face Lilly or something. And then it will pop up with others that I have of her.

But if it’s like someone blinking or maybe you’d save it is an outtake. But you don’t need like four pictures of someone blinking and the same– so I just kind of lean back a little bit on– but I take a lot of pictures. I may have like 100 pictures. So I’m scaling it down to 10, which is cutting out a lot but I’m probably not going to need more than that from that too.

JENNY GUY: Very helpful. OK, so we are almost out of time. And what we always like to end with here is action items. So I would love to hear from you what two or three things any content creator can do today to step up their photography game.

And it would be awesome if you could include– if you had any courses or websites or places like that that are your go-to when you have questions about photography. And I’m going to let you think about that while I make a couple of announcements.

JENNIFER BORGET: OK.

JENNY GUY: OK, so on the next Teal Talk, guys, it’s in two weeks. It is Thursday, February 24 at 3:00 PM Eastern time. We have Carmen Stinson and Ashland Huckabee of the Mediavine Publisher Support team. We are going to be talking about what is broken on your site, and what are the most common questions that our support team receives.

It’s basically going to be a live breakdown of all the things that they are fixing for our publishers on a daily basis. We are super excited about that. And that’s in two weeks on February 24.

In the meantime, if you are watching, we hope you have already subscribed to our YouTube channel and liked us on Facebook. We are celebrating Black History Month. All the month of February, we’re sharing some of the incredible black content creators that Mediavine is privileged to work with.
And earlier this week, we shared a beautiful blog post from Mediavine’s support specialist Ashland, who I talked about that will be on Teal Talk in a couple of weeks that we encourage you to give a read. We’re very excited about all of that. And before we say, bye, Jennifer, give us these action items, please.

JENNIFER BORGET: Yeah, OK. So if you’re wanting to up your game and just learn how to use your camera, you’re not sure where to start, Canon has a great– I did a course with them on photographing children, active children. And it’s free now. They have it on YouTube.

So if you just go to Youtube.com/canonusa, you can find not only my course but tons of different courses for learning about different types of photography. So that is one place I would go. YouTube is awesome. You can learn anything there, really.

JENNY GUY: True.

JENNIFER BORGET: And Clickin Moms is another great site that has more– if you’re not as much of a– I mean, a lot of us are visual but sometimes you just want to like read the content not watch. And you feel like you’re waiting like, let me just skim and find the part that I’m looking for.
So that website is really good for learning those types of tips. I have great posts on finding the right gear broken down really simply, and how to use your gear breaking down with different settings and things like that, I mean on your camera.

And just find the lights. Always look for Windows and be aware of that natural light. I think that is the simplest, quickest way to up your photography game is to be aware of where the light is.

JENNY GUY: Love all of those tips. You’ve been wonderful. Where can we find you if we want to find you?

JENNIFER BORGET: Instagram, Jennifer Borget—

JENNY GUY: You definitely do!

JENNIFER BORGET: –I’m always there. You can message me, and I’ll reply. @jenniferborget, it’s just my name. And then Cherish365.com is where I have all sorts of blogging stuff. So I have lots of camera stuff there under the Cherish 365 section that has a lot of my photography tips and journaling tips and things like that for connecting with your family. And then there’s a lot of other resources on there. Well–

JENNY GUY: You have been an absolute treat. And we know that your children are demanding your time, so we’re going to let you go for now, but thank–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNIFER BORGET: I know, and I think I’m really quiet, honestly–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNY GUY: That’s super duper quiet. I’m a little nervous.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: So really, thank you so much for coming, everyone. Thank you for watching. And we’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Jennifer, you’re the best. Goodbye.

JENNIFER BORGET: Thank you. Bye.

The post Teal Talk®: Making Photography a Priority This Year with Jennifer Borget appeared first on Mediavine.

Daniella Flores from I Like to Dabble and Schnelle (Nellie) Acevedo from Brooklyn Active Mama join Jenny Guy, Mediavine’s Director of Marketing, in a conversation about how they use Canva for different social media platforms, including Pinterest.

Our experts talk about Canva templates, automation, organization, video and more. This video is full of Canva tips and trick and perfect for anyone just starting out. There are even a few tips for intermediate users so you won’t want to miss this one! (Originally aired 10/8/2020)

Watch the video here or check out the transcript below.

Design Your Way to Success

JENNY GUY: Hello ghouls and gals. It is Thursday, October 8. Welcome to Teal Talk. I am your host, Jenny Guy, your ghost host. Do a little Haunted Mansion throwback there, thank you for appreciating it. This is an hour a week, no matter when you’re watching, whether it’s live or the replay, where you can forget about all the craziness in the world and whatever insect has made at home on our vice president’s head this week and focus on yourself and improving your business.

And I am so excited for this week because we are talking about Canva, which is a tool that is used by so many bloggers. It’s relevant now, it’ll be relevant in the future, and my guests are total experts. So again, I’m going to say the question I asked right as we were getting started in the live again. Please tell us if you’re a Canva user and if you’re using the free version or the Pro version, so tell us what made you upgrade.

But as I was saying about my guests, they are total experts in Canva and they are here to dish on the updates that we’ve had that are pretty recent, and share best practices and top tips to help you all level up your game, including some special offers for you guys that I’ll be sharing later. But first, let us meet them. Daniella Flores founded I Like to Dabble back in 2017 to help others build multiple streams of income– love that– and take control in their lives in their businesses.

Three years later, it’s gone on to be one of the top side hustle resource websites with a combined monthly reach of over 100,000 users via their website and social media, and is a two time Plutust awards finalist, that’s FinCon. Daniella also holds a series of Canva happy hour events, which we were pleased to be a part of a couple months ago, that have helped over 200 side hustlers, bloggers, and small business owners leverage Canva to level up their content and business. Welcome, Daniella.

DANIELLA FLORES: Hey, thanks for having me.

JENNY GUY: And then I’m going to introduce, Nellie is the founder of the award winning and the award nominated Brooklyn Active Mama, a platform dedicated to providing recipes, printables, and fitness tips for busy moms. Nellie uses her platform to empower women with the tools they need to cultivate their best lives. We are all wanting to live our best lives.
Nellie also creates premade Canva templates for bloggers looking to improve their website traffic by creating lots of Pinterest pins in half the time. Welcome, Nellie. Thank you for being here.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be here.

JENNY GUY: We are so, so, so excited to be talking about this. And we’re going to start as we always do on this show, which is the background for you guys beyond your bios. So I would love for each of you to tell me a little bit more about your journey as content creators, and how long have you had your websites? Are you currently full time bloggers? Tell me a little bit about that, and we’ll start with Daniella.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah. So I’ve had iliketodabble.com since I bought the domain back in March of 2017. Three and a half years later, it’s definitely become something different than it was originally. I first started as a hobby and craft blog, and it definitely took a different turn as my life changed and my focus changed, and I really honed in on what I wanted to do with the blog.

So I don’t do it full time, I still work a day job. And I eventually want to leave my day job, but right now it’s obviously not the plans for this year.

JENNY GUY: OK. Excellent. And same question to you, Nellie. Tell me a little bit about it.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: So I started brooklynactivemama.com nine years ago, and I’m, I guess, what you consider an old school blogger. I started it as a weight loss journey type of blog, and it’s since morphed into recipes and printables and everything that a busy mom needs. I’ve been blogging full time now for four years, and it has been such a joy to just be an entrepreneur and to create everything, honestly.

JENNY GUY: Love that. And also super helpful with, as we were talking about before with your three kids and homeschooling and all the craziness that’s been happening, being able to have more input in your schedule, I’m sure, it has to be helpful.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Absolutely.

JENNY GUY: So when did you guys become Canva aficionados? Do you use the free or the Pro version? And where do you find Canva the most useful with your website, social, with your business? We’ll start with Nellie, there.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: OK. So I’ve been using Canva for about three years now. I used to be a huge PicMonkey fan, but now I’m all into Canva. Canva– I use it for everything. Mainly Pinterest, but I use it for Facebook, Instagram, for quotes, anything I can really think of. Honestly, I’ve used it for PDFs, I’ve used it for e-books, there’s so many different things that you can use Canva for, and I’ve been using it extensively.

Like, there’s not a day that I don’t use it. I create about 70 to 100 pins a week, so I’m always into– in, in, in Canva every single day.

JENNY GUY: I love it. Same question to you, Daniella.

DANIELLA FLORES: Wow. 70 pins a week, that’s amazing. So similar, I’ve been using Canva for three years. I was a huge PicMonkey aficionado too before, but PicMonkey versus Canva, I mean, Canva, obviously, takes the cake. I used it free most of the time too, and I actually didn’t get the Pro version until about a year ago when I wanted to start creating more products for my site.

And I use it to create all the products for my site aside from the course hosting. I use it to create all the graphics on my site, on my Pinterest images, my Instagram images, any image you see that comes from my site or my social media is coming from Canva.

JENNY GUY: That’s fantastic. OK. Let’s talk a little bit, just while we’re here, about Pro versus free, and what difference you’ve seen. Because you said up until a year ago, and so you were basically using Canva extensively for two years free. And that was– so talk about what made you upgrade it, if you think it’s worth it.

DANIELLA FLORES: So I wanted the unlimited access to the stock photos, and especially when they added the video too. I was like, well, they’ve got to have Pro now, because that would have definitely signed me on then too, especially you know how big video pins are now. Of course, there’s a variety of features that are only available on Pro, like being able to share the template, being able to resize and copy for different sizes.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Social media, Facebook, et cetera.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah, basically. I mean, it’s just so much easier to use the Pro version. And I mean, the price was there wasn’t really a question about it. I was like, oh, well, this is like everything included. It’s one of the most helpful tools I use with my blog.

JENNY GUY: And same question to you, Nellie. When did you go Pro?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: I went Pro pretty quickly. I didn’t really hesitate. I think the resize feature is what sold me. I really love being able to easily turn my pin into a Facebook image, into the Instagram image, into an Instagram story. It was super, super easy. And I really loved the fonts, there are so many fonts that are available through Pro that’s not available. And the elements, the elements are fantastic. And I’m the type of person that I need access everything. Like, you’re not going to tease me and say I, need that with the pro. No, I need everything.

JENNY GUY: Like, give me everything.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Give me everything.

JENNY GUY: I also like with Canva is that you have to do less worrying about the recommended sizes for the different platforms you’re not having to keep on top of it. They’re keeping on top of it for you. Therefore, you’re not like, oh, crap, when you put it in and it’s the wrong size. And we’ve all been there, we’ve all put a thing in and gone, that’s not right. What changed? And then you get really annoyed, yes. I’ve definitely been there.

So we’re talking a lot about resizing and social media, and I want to hear from both of your perspectives. What makes a successful social media graphic? And I know that it’s different based on different platforms, so we can take this first I’d like to hear general, if you have any general tips. And then if you want to focus on a specific platform that you feel really skilled in and can help. We’ll start with, Daniella, please.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah. So, of course, Instagram versus Pinterest are different. But I have more experience with Pinterest over time and how to create successful graphics on Pinterest, and lately I’ve done a lot of testing with video pins. And what I think performs the best on Pinterest is you want to make it pop, but you don’t want to have too much going on. You don’t want to have elements all over the place, too many colors, and definitely never use more than two fonts is what I’ve normally found.

I mean, there’s been a couple of instances where I probably use maybe another font just for like a certain kind of thing I want to create. But I mean, they usually have clear text that you can read. I don’t really use script text that much. My brand colors. And right now the majority of them are video pins at this moment, because I have gotten a lot more success with video pins right now, especially over the normal image pins from before.

JENNY GUY: Love that. Same question, Nellie, also. But before I say that, the script thing, I think what you’re saying is accessibility. We’re seeing that so much across every platform and it applies to social. I remember when Pinterest became a thing there were so many pins, we were like, what, what that say? Because we all like script, but I know for a fact that my cursive writing is not legible to many people.

So I love to do it when I’m taking notes, but not for pins. OK. Nellie, same question to you. What makes a good social media graphic?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: So I think anything that stops the scroll, honestly. I am big about bold, easy to read writing, easy to read fonts. My fonts are sometimes the most basic fonts and they work. So I’ve been doing a lot of testing with Pinterest, with Instagram, and honestly those script fonts, they’re just not it. And, let’s just complete honesty here, my sixth grader does not even know how to read script. I was taught how to write script–

JENNY GUY: We all were.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: — but the kids are not, so we got to keep that in mind too. So when it comes to the graphics and all of that stuff, I really, really strongly believe in easy to read, bold letters. I am a big fan of all caps. I just think it’s a lot easier to read on mobile.

JENNY GUY: Yeah, and mobile is where we’re browsing. We’re not on Pinterest on our desktops, most people aren’t on desktops to begin with. So I want to revisit this topic of testing, because you brought it up and I definitely want to talk a little bit more about that before we get Michelle’s question, and I do see you Michelle. Talk about how you test social media graphics out. What is the system and where are you– are you doing A/B testing? Are you tracking your results? Tell me, we’ll start with you Nellie.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: All right. So basically what I do is with my pins, because that’s where I spend most of my time, I use either a completely different font, like, let’s just say I have a recipe. And I have three amazing food image recipes. So I have a soup, and the soup is this angle, it’s that angle, it’s this angle. And then I’ll put them, three, three different pins, with three different colors, three different fonts. Some with elements, so some with the arrow. Some with maybe a squiggly line on top. And I just check those and I put them out. I schedule them via Pinterest, and I put them out one hour after the next.

JENNY GUY: OK.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Then the next day, I check and see how they do. And honestly, it’s usually one of them that just goes really, really crazy. And then the other two just kind of lag behind.

JENNY GUY: OK. Great. Same question to you Daniella, how do you test?

DANIELLA FLORES: So it’s really similar where it’s like, they’re kind of a similar template, but there’s definitely little variants between them because we know how Pinterest looks at the images now. They want new fresh images every time. So you also want to make sure they’re not too close to being the same thing. So yeah, might be color variation, maybe different elements. I might have– like, right now I have I’m into– if you look at my pictures, I’m into like this brush stroke thing that I have going across mine. So I’ll take that out or I’ll put a different place, or make that font different.

And then I’ll do one where it’s the image in the background or on whatever part of it is. And then another one will be like a video, because I’m doing that right now too, where I’m testing image versus video, because of how– and then the different kinds of videos. We have actual video and then we have animations. So per hour is actually a good idea. I’ve been doing per half hour, which is maybe a little bit too close. And I get mixed results, but yeah, usually one does the best and the others– there’s usually one that does very minimal.

JENNY GUY: Then you know that one didn’t work and we move on.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah, it’s like, ew. Pitch that and never use that design again.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: You have to feed the Pinterest monster, right. You just have to feed it and see if it likes you and if it doesn’t like you.

JENNY GUY: All right.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Good to know. And so you said how many new pins a week, Nellie?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: I do 70 to 100 a week.

JENNY GUY: A week. And are they all brand new pins–

NELLIE ACEVEDO: All brand new pins.

JENNY GUY: — through Pinterest, not using a scheduler.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: No I use– yeah, through Pinterest their scheduler. Their native scheduler.

JENNY GUY: All right, all right. OK. Michelle asked, how do you make video pins useful for you when users can’t click through to your website from them?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: You can. I mean, to mine–

NELLIE ACEVEDO: They can click through. I think she might be talking about story pins, because story pins don’t have a link to them.

JENNY GUY: OK. So there are and how– while we’re talking, we’re going to talk more about video here in a second, but have you seen a lot of Pinterest rewarding coming from the video pins?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Yeah. I mean, I do a lot of video pins as well. They’re so easy in Canva. You just hit animate and it’s just like, the words jump in on the side or they jump out at you. I mean, it’s so simple you could literally make like 10 in five minutes. It’s very simple to make video pins in Canva. And I think when you upload the video pin versus a regular pin, you get a lot of views on it, you get a lot of saves on it, and Pinterest is just pushing the video more.

So I think when you add more video pins, you’re not only helping what you’re doing right now, but you’re helping your old pins to rise up in the results as well.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Same question to you, Daniella. What results are you seeing with your video pins?

DANIELLA FLORES: Similar results. I mean, the views, the impressions go way up. And the click throughs are also going up since video pins are– they’re not super new to Pinterest, but they are still semi new compared to the rest of the features, and that’s how Pinterest has always been. The newest features, they push the most. So you wanna make sure that you’re using all of these new features because it’s also just going to make Pinterest like you more.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: That’s it.

JENNY GUY: We have– we have the same thing where LaShawn when we were talking about Instagram two weeks ago, she said, well, I may not be going all in on a new feature like Reels, I at least used it a little bit because they are telling you they like it. And if you’re using it minimally, at the very least you’re trying to give them what they want. Larisha said, right now the Pinterest monster doesn’t seem to like anyone. Have you guys noticed any Pinterest struggle bus lately? Danielle, Nellie, either of you?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: I haven’t. I’m really excited because my traffic– my traffic from Pinterest has just exploded in the last two months.

JENNY GUY: Congrats.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Oh, thank you. I’m just like really excited and I honestly think it’s the consistency. I’ve seen other bloggers having trouble with Pinterest and I’m just like, I’m so sorry.

JENNY GUY: Not happening to me right now.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: For me, it’s been really, really good.

JENNY GUY: How much of your traffic– what is your traffic percentage from Pinterest?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Oh, gosh. Probably 85%.

JENNY GUY: 85%, great. Daniella, same question to you. Are you noticing any Pinterest woes and what is your traffic percentage from Pinterest?

DANIELLA FLORES: So I experienced some woes here and there, but it was when I wasn’t creating enough new pins.

JENNY GUY: OK.

DANIELLA FLORES: When I started creating enough new pins, started staying consistent, I saw the results. And also you want to make sure you’re implementing SEO on your pins and your titles and descriptions, because you can’t depend on that one day that your new pin is pinned out there. You want that people can find it when they search. So definitely look up Pinterest SEO, that’s going to help you in the long run. You want sustainable growth on Pinterest. Don’t be chasing it every day. And my percentage, so a huge focus lately has been Google. So even though I do get the same good sustainable traffic with Pinterest, it’s probably about 60% of my traffic now.

JENNY GUY: 60%. OK, cool. Would you have any good recommendations for Pinterest SEO articles, post, courses, anything that we can share with people to help with that?

DANIELLA FLORES: There’s one podcast that I really like and it’s called the Simple Pin Media Podcast. Definitely check that out. You don’t have to read anything, you just listen to it.

JENNY GUY: She is lovely. Nellie, same thing to you.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: My only tip and how I do my SEO is I literally look at the top five of whatever I’m trying to rank for, and I study those descriptions, what they have in common. And try to write something similar and see if that works.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. While we have been really focusing on Canva as an excellent tool for Pinterest, that cannot be denied, it can be a whole lot more. So will you talk us how you use Canva for different social media platforms, and give us a crash course in effects. Why do you love them, why are they so important to your strategy? I’m going to start with Nellie.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: OK. So effects are pretty new. They came in the last couple of months or so. I was slow roll, not everybody had the same time, but eventually everyone started to get it. So basically what effects are is when you put your text on a screen you can add like a little jumph to it.

JENNY GUY: Yeah.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: So basically what you’re doing– a little jumph.

JENNY GUY: Canva marketing.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Make that note, OK. So basically what you can do, you can outline your letters, you can do a little shade behind your letters, you can put a little shadow and you can choose which direction it’s coming from. So basically it’s just making your text pop. So if you even don’t want to use an effect on the back of your text, you don’t have to because you can use an outline to make it stand out more.

So it’s another way to stop the scroll and really grab people’s attention with that beautiful text.

JENNY GUY: Right now I’m getting strong, like, when you used to make PowerPoints way back in the day and you were like, I can make my things jump on, I can make them jump off, I can make them go forward, I can make them swipe to the left. That was my favorite. But yes–

NELLIE ACEVEDO: It’s back again.

JENNY GUY: I love it. But any kind of motion or something that’s going to set you apart, it sounds like a good idea. OK. So talk about other platforms than Pinterest. Would you talk a little bit, Daniella, help us a little bit here.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah. So I could talk about Instagram, which is probably the newest one that I’ve been trying to bring up to the Pinterest level of success, and with Canva, it’s probably the number one thing that’s helped me grow that following. I love that just the same way you can create Pinterest templates, you can create Instagram templates in Canva too. But I actually struggled for a while to create like those little graphics where it’s like, they’re kind of like the cute little cartoony looking simple design that I wanted.

And I actually found a designer, Pixistock, and she has some amazing Instagram templates that I found inspiration from. So I purchased her calendar bundle for Instagram, just for some inspiration. I needed some help because I was like, I don’t really know where to start. So I used those, and now I use them mostly for inspiration. And then I add animations to it. She also has animations in them too. Because when you’re looking at Canva, they do have templates available for Instagram and you can look through them.

But what I wanted just wasn’t– wasn’t feeling it. I wanted more of a pop because my brand is very colorful, a lot of pops going on. So what I found Pixistock I was like, OK, I love these templates. I’m going to use these for my inspiration going forward, and that’s what I stuck with. And they also– you don’t want to use those templates as they are, you want to use them for your brand. You want to switch it up, definitely get creative with it. And then you have new ideas that come from that. And then the elements on Canva too are super helpful, especially the animated ones.

You can actually animate anything on Canva. So you could just click on it and then select animate. I love doing those on my Instagram too. I used to– before Reels– I used to take my TikTok videos and then put them on the Instagram with my– whatever color background, it would be usually my teal background that I have for my brand color or my background. And then I would put my TikTok video on top of that. But then two weeks later, Reels came out and I was like, oh, I don’t do that anymore, I have Reels.

JENNY GUY: They heard you. They felt what you were going for and they adapted. That’s what they do.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: It’s evolution. So we’ve dipped our toe in this water, and you mentioned it. Let’s talk templates because I don’t think you can talk about Canva and any sort of time saving strategy without talking about templates. Let’s talk through template creation strategies. I’m going to start with Daniella and then I’m going to go to Nellie, because we also have a special offer from Nellie. If you just don’t want to mess with template creation, you don’t even have to. OK. So Daniella, let’s start with you.

DANIELLA FLORES: All right. So when I first started creating my own templates, I started with other templates. So for Instagram I turned to Pixistock that got most my inspiration from now. For Pinterest, I never actually bought any templates. I’ve always created my own pins. For a while I had my template going on with PicMonkey that I did like because I really liked some of their elements for a long time, until I finally just made the leap to Canva Pro and then drowned in the elements and the animations and unlimited stock photos.

And what I like to do is I first go on Pinterest, I look at inspirations. So I have private boards out there where I save pins to that I really like the designs on that rank well. And then I’ll also save pins of mine in those private boards that are top performing pins. So I’ll basically take them out of my– I’ll go look at my analytics every month and I’ll add new. It’d be like, these are the top performing ones, keep creating stuff like this.

And I have a series of different styles of templates in my Canva that I will create from, and some that I probably won’t create from for a while too just because of like, oh, this is dropping off this style maybe. And I’m seeing myself now even switching it up even more, and I’m adding even more template variation because I want to keep up with the Pinterest monster. But I start with my brand colors, of course, but usually like a shape of some sort. I like the rectangle on top of the background image and then I’ll have my brand colors on the bottom where my domain name is.

Maybe with a number or just in a brush stroke or a blob, or maybe like a shadow box thing in the back. I’ll just play around a lot, just test things out see how it looks. And I’ll even put stuff I don’t even really like on Pinterest to see how it’ll do, because I’ve seen a lot of times where I’ll put stuff out that I hate, Pinterest loves.

JENNY GUY: And it’s– I think that when you were talking about creating things, who are you creating them for when using scripts? You might really like script, but that’s not necessarily about your audience. Are you creating your pins to be pinned, liked, or because you liked them. Nellie, same question to you. Talk to us about how you use templates and how people can use your templates if they don’t want to create their own, or get a start.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Oh, sure no problem. So I make a lot of pins per week, as I’ve mentioned a couple times. And it is not easy because I have an entire family to take care of, and a house and all that other stuff. So I need to make it as quick as possible. And usually I don’t spend more than half an hour doing 10 to 12 pins a day. And if I know I’m going to have a busy day the next day, I’ll do 24 pins. So it really depends on how much I have to do.

So what I did was I created some templates. And these templates are with different shapes, sizes, I had bought template packages in the past and none of them spoke to me, especially as a mom and a person who writes a lot about parenting, a person who does a lot of recipes, it just felt very, very generic.

So I did a lifestyle type of package where I designed 10 different pin styles and you can throw pretty much anything in there from food to travel to pregnancy, whatever it is you can throw out any topic in there. Some with multiple images, some with one image, but a whole array of different types of design. So whatever you feel like doing, you can do it on that day.
Now everything is editable, so you can change your colors or you could change your fonts, but it’s also for anyone who has the free version. So I made sure that any of the elements that I used were on the free version so that if you buy the templates you don’t necessarily have to sign up for Canva Pro.

JENNY GUY: That’s fantastic. And tell us you have a special offer going for our audience today.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: I do. And if you guys use the coupon code, MV20, you guys will receive 20% off any package.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. We’ve dropped that link in there. We have also dropped in the coupon code if you guys want to take a look at some of these packages and get a start, and also, I think that one of the other big things I was actually talking to our director of publishers sport yesterday, Heather, and we were talking about– she was talking about being realistic about your time. Just because you know you necessarily like, I should be working in Canva Pro, I should be spending more time on these effects. But are going to?

If you have– she was saying if you have four family dinners that you’re hosting over this month, you’re probably not going to be like, you know what I want to do, I want to go do some Canva Pro features right now. So be realistic and if you need a short cut, do it. OK. We have a question from Molly Elizabeth. Can you use Canva on mobile or is it just a desktop operation. Application, not operation.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: It is absolutely on mobile. Yeah I use it on mobile.

JENNY GUY: Is it a good app? Yes.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah, I used it– I created a pin on my mobile app, actually, right before this.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

JENNY GUY: Yes, that’s so exciting. And you have to have Canva Pro to have the app, or the app is available to both free or Pro versions? Do we know?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: I want to say free is available as well. Yeah, because I was able to create a video that I had shot with my kids and it made it really pretty on Canva before I put it out to the world. So it’s pretty awesome. I mean, it’s actually a really good workhorse app. Oftentimes you see that apps come out and they’re just like a 10% of the actual app, but this one, it works really hard. So yeah. I’d recommend.

JENNY GUY: So Google Docs. Has anyone ever tried to do anything on a Google Doc on their mobile app? Because it does not work.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Not the same.

JENNY GUY: At all. I’m sitting at home, I’m like, why, why this is useless. Why do we even have this? I can see that people are requesting changes, but I can’t do anything about it. So great. I’m glad that I know that. Thank you for this app. Michelle said, Nellie, after I create a bunch of pins I feel like I spend way too long on the actual uploading and scheduling to Pinterest. Can you share your workflow? I want to hear that from both of you. Nellie, please talk about that, and then we’ll go to Daniella.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Absolutely, absolutely. So basically what I do is I create in bunches. So I’ll do three of one piece of content. So it will be three of tomato soup, three of Rice Krispie treats, three of whatever, and then I upload. I click the plus sign, when I click Create, click the plus sign. One, two, and three. So you click it three times.

You add your graphic, one, two, and three. And then I just copy and paste my title, I copy and paste my description, and then I copy and paste my link. And just like that, I choose which time I’m going to publish for the next day, and then I’m done. It’s really fast, don’t gotta think about it. I hope that helps.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Same question you Daniella, do you have any sort of methodologies that you use when you’re scheduling? And do you schedule using Pinterest native scheduler or are you live pinning, or are you using another platform?

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah. So I use Pinterest native scheduler as well for my new pins, but I use Tailwind too. So I use them both intermingling, but all my new pins go through the native scheduler or I do it manually. Just because I like to test out the manual stuff still. I use the app manually as a user, and I want to be able to just keep doing that. I don’t want to rely too heavily on scheduling with Pinterest because I know I’ve gotten backlash before– not backlash from the app, but I saw it my results were it’s like, maybe I need to manually use it a little bit more.

But then all my repins and scheduling out for like– right now my content’s probably scheduled out for the next three months in Tailwind. But that’s just all my repinned content. And then maybe a couple of new ones here and there that I sprinkled in, because I’m always testing and experimenting things. Probably a little bit too much, but.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Love to hear that. Love, love, love it. OK. So let us move on a little bit here. So the Mediavine marketing team uses Canva some, and we are going to be all ears to talk about this. How do you keep yourself organized in Canva, because we have struggled on trying– the search feature is not our favorite on that. And so we’ve struggled, especially working with multiple people in Canva trying to get– because you can’t find anything.

And so with so many files and the new updates and so many capabilities, let’s talk a little bit about organization because we want, if you can’t find it, it doesn’t matter how quick your process is you just can’t locate it. So Nellie, we’ll start with you.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: OK. So a few months ago Canva started with folders and it has changed my entire situation with Canva. I used to just blindly upload everything and then go and scroll back for it when I had to create a pin, but now there’s folders. You can create folders inside of folders. I mean, it’s as organized as you need to get. I have probably close to 70 folders for each individual recipe that I have.

I also have folders for each individual printable screenshot or whatever it is that I have for that. Every roundup I have a folder for. So every folder– I have a Christmas folder, which has Christmas stuff. I have a Thanksgiving folder, Halloween folder. So really, it can be as organized as you need it to be.

JENNY GUY: Love hearing that. And how long has that been out, because I’m crazy about that.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: I think a couple months now. So whenever they said, you can add a folder. I was like, yes, let’s go. And I shut it down for the whole day and I just organize everything into the folders. It’s so much easier.

JENNY GUY: Awesome. OK, same question to you, Daniella. Tell us how do you organize and keep yourself together? And if you have any– you want to talk a little bit about scheduling as well, that would be great. We’re all about time saving here.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah. So in Canva, obviously, when they introduced the folders, I hopped on it too, but not to the extent that Nellie did. Hers is way better. I don’t have a folder for every single article that I have out there. I am creating holiday folders right now though. And I have a folder for every type, like my Pinterest templates, my Instagram templates, and then I have ones for the Pixistock stuff because hers is one big thing, so I have to separate it out.

I have the ones for my featured images, for my blog, but I’m definitely getting some great ideas from Nellie too. Probably make it even more segmented because that sounds like a great idea, it just takes a lot of time. But yeah, the folders– yeah, the folders change the game. And then talk about scheduling, so Canva does have that new scheduling content calendar feature.

The only thing is I haven’t been able to use it for anything yet because they don’t have it available for Instagram and they don’t have– for Canva, I was trying to test out the Pinterest scheduling on it and you can’t add a link on it, at least last time I checked. But I’m looking to try it out for the other ones they have available, I just haven’t gotten around to yet.

JENNY GUY: OK. Stacy is asking, where’s your naming convention for the folders? Nellie, since you have so many.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Oh, it’s so simple. It’s just the name of the recipe. So it’d be like, air fryer potato wedges. And whatever it is, it’s literally that. So if I’m looking for air fryer stuff and I have an air fryer folder, then I go into the air fryer folder and I pick out my air fryer recipes. It’s so simple. Nothing complicated.

JENNY GUY: It’s sounds like you’ve done it– you’ve done it based on your– more your keywords. Like your SEO keyphrase—

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Oh, 100%.

JENNY GUY: — air fryer, so everything is organized in that way. So if you are in need of something, if something is performing well, you can just go in there, grab those pins, and love that.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Yes.

JENNY GUY: OK. Fantastic. One of the biggest buzzwords in marketing is branding. And we’re talking about crafting, and cultivating an intentional overall look that exemplifies your website and carries your messaging forward in all of your interactions. Wherever you are, even if you can’t be there to give that elevator pitch, your pin is doing it for you, your social media– wherever it is, is doing that for you. And Daniella, you’re a big fan of getting your branding totally set up in Canva, making it much easier to create those on brand graphics quickly.

Will you tell us more about how you set all that up? And I would love to hear both of you a little more about your process in creating that brand that you guys both clearly have very strong and intentional brands. So Daniella. Tell me a little more.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah. So there is a feature in Canva, it’s available on the free and Pro version, it’s called the brand kit. And I recommend that anybody that when they sign up for Canva free or Pro, when they first sign up, do this before anything else if you have your brand colors and logo and fonts together. You go into the brand kit and you’ll upload your logo, your brand colors and your brand fonts.

And when you create any document in Canva these will be pre-populated for you. You’ll see your colors on the color palette and then when you add any text, it will basically just take on the font that you set for that specific heading or text. It makes image creation so much easier. I mean, that’s something you couldn’t do in PicMonkey.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Love. Same question to you, Nellie. How did you set up your brand using the brand kit? And then how did you pick your brand?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Well, I did the same thing that Daniella said, I uploaded my logo, I had all of my colors in there, but I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit off the cuff. I go with the actual photo and I go from there. So whatever my heart says, I’m like, you go. It may not be my brand colors.

JENNY GUY: OK. Fantastic. That’s really great.

DANIELLA FLORES: Let’s that’s totally true. I mean, on Pinterest I definitely switch around with colors.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Yeah.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Do you have a palette that you’ve chosen for your brand, or are you just free with whatever the picture says?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: I’m free.

JENNY GUY: Free with whatever it says.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Generally– I mean, generally, I, as a rule, I try to keep my words up top and I have a white background with maybe a different color words or so forth. Because I think, for me, I’m always trying to see how can I make Pinterest read my pin the easiest, right. So I’m trying to make it as clear as possible to them so that when they read the pin, they know to group my pin with the rest of related pins. Because that’s, in general, that’s how people pin. They pin in groups.

They save everything, they save 30 of one pin. So if somebody is looking for Halloween snacks today, they’re going to save 30 Halloween snacks. I need to make sure that my pin is the next one in the recommended pins. So that’s my main goal for designing.

JENNY GUY: Love it. Same question to you Daniella, talk about how you– we know that we’re free with colors based on the photos, but what makes you decide things?

DANIELLA FLORES: So making the design choices, I usually think about people when they’re scrolling and they’re pinning, kind of what’s going to pop out at them. And then also, keywords too. I try to keep the keywords also on the pin, as well as the title and description. I know there’s no proof out there that that works, but it works for me. I do switch between mostly white pins and then pins with an image background, but then the image background won’t be taking away from anything that’s the center focus of the text and the call to action because that’s mostly in the middle.

And there is some white balance between it. And then sometimes I won’t use my brand colors, I’ll probably use my brand color palette or some of the colors from it. But then I’ll mix and match with other colors. I like using the color palette picker on Canva to grab colors from the image that I’m using. So maybe I’ll add certain things just to match up certain colors of a text or a background shadow color with the color that’s in the picture. Yeah.

JENNY GUY: So backtrack, what is the color palette picker?

DANIELLA FLORES: Canva has this free tool called the color palette picker. So if you go to Google and type in, Canva color palette picker, it’ll be the first option.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. And what does it do?

DANIELLA FLORES: So when you go there, you can use their demo images, which are a lot of their stock images or you can upload an image. And then it will tell you basically the biggest colors in that image, so the colors that make up most of the image.

JENNY GUY: OK. And then help you choose complementary colors or accent colors to help create a visually cohesive pin. All right. So you guys are dropping a lot of amazing tips. Nellie has got the, if you don’t necessarily have time to become a Canva expert right now, you don’t have to be. You can just grab some of her templates that exist and get started that way. Daniella, you are providing some education for people who want to learn more about Canva. Tell me a little bit more about what you’re doing with your Canva parties.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah. So I host a series of workshops that are called Canva Happy Hours. And we go over a different topic each time, and tonight we’re having the Canva Happy Hour, all about crafting your brand aesthetic. So we’ll walk you in how to use mood boards in Canva. How to create your own mood board, how to select brand colors, and also how to form your brand. If you’re really new in the process of your blog or you want to rebrand we’ll also bring you through the steps to do that.

I have a branding expert, Sarah, who will be joining us. And it’s at 7:00 PM Central, 8:00 PM Eastern. And then I am giving a discount to everybody who’s joining this. So with the code, Mediavine, you will get 20% off. The cost is actually $10, 50% of all the registration fee goes to the Louisville Bail Fund. And you’ll get $2 off of that, so it’ll only be $8.

JENNY GUY: Excellent. And we are sharing Daniella’s Canva Happy Hours there. Love hearing that conversation about branding that’s happening tonight, so helpful. We’ll keep sharing those codes. The code is in there. Love that extra money is going to the Bail Fund. Love everything about that. OK. Loving that journey. Anyone who has been in the content creation business for longer than five minutes has heard that video is everything. Everyone loves video. We’ve already been talking about video. We’re going to talk about it more now.

At Mediavine, we have the year of video, which became the decade of video, that rolled into the new decade of video, where everyone loves video. The social networks are prioritizing it. Google is prioritizing it. If you want to really turbo charge yourself in the rankings, you need to use video. How does Canva make video creation easier, Nellie. Talk more about how you’re using it and how long have you been doing it?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: OK. So I’ve been using video with Canva for a long time, but I just want to give you another honest moment here that I am a struggle video person. Like, I make cooking struggle videos. Like, that’s my thing. I’m holding with camera and I’m mixing, and then I’m like, and then I’m doing this, and then I’m coming down here. And it is just me, it’s not like BuzzFeed or Tasty or anything like that. It is the opposite of that. So–

JENNY GUY: I love it.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: — with all of that, somehow it still resonates because I guess people see themselves in me.

JENNY GUY: Yes.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: So it’s not the most perfect video, but it works. And I’m, OK, in iMovie, I can speed things up and cut things up or things like that. But once I take that final video and put it in Canva, I can make it just that much pretty. I have uploaded– last year I uploaded a video From St. Lucia, and I’m able to upload the video, I’m able to put the video on top, put beautiful letters in the middle and a still picture, and it’s all of a sudden, it’s a beautiful video pin.

The same thing goes for my Instagram. So I made a funny video a couple of weeks ago where I was pretending to be someone from London, and it’s a whole thing, just check my Instagram for it. Anyway, and I was able to put the photo of Adele and the video of me all in Canva, and I did that on my phone, and put it up on my IGTV. So it can be used many, many different ways, I don’t a lot of people realize this. And another thing, the final thing, is that you can actually add music.

They have some music on there. So if you don’t want people to hear your voice or your kids screaming in the background, just put some music on there. They have happy music, they have mellow music, they have lots of different things. I think they’re adding more as we go along.

JENNY GUY: And really helpful. And you’re using those videos on Pinterest. You’re using those videos on IGTV. Have you ever used them in stories? Like you can use them everywhere?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Oh, yeah. For sure, for sure. Everywhere.

JENNY GUY: Love, love, love. Same question to you, Daniella. What video capabilities are you taking advantage of in Canva?

DANIELLA FLORES: So I recently went and created a YouTube. I am mostly just doing tutorial videos right now. There’s only Canva tutorials on there. The majority my video dabbling right now is on TikTok and Reels, and I’m just playing around with the videos that are on Canva, the stock videos there. And adding some stuff to them like for pins or for Instagram posts. And videos are the thing that I slept on the longest, so I’m still getting into it. And without Canva I’d be completely lost for video.

JENNY GUY: Love that, I mean, not that you’d be lost, but love that you’re dabbling in, your dipping your toe in, and it’s OK. Everybody has their own style or feel and I think that’s the beauty of all these different– not everyone has to be the same, not everyone has to do the same thing. That’s why you’re the best at being you, for sure. I want to ask a question to our audience, what do you struggle with when it comes to designing graphics from your website?

Tell us in the comments. Make a comment, tell us what you’re struggling with when it comes to these graphics.

And with our expert guests I’m going to ask, how do you get critique on your designs? And if somebody is– if you’re struggling with– I know you’re doing testing on your own and there’s always the vote that people get by pinning, that’s a pretty clear indication that something is working. But how do you design on your own? Could you ask friends? Do you ask specific questions? How do you get feedback to make yourself more confident? I’m going to start with Daniella on that one, Daniella.

DANIELLA FLORES: All right. So there’s a couple people that help me. My wife probably helps me the most because I’ll be sitting there on my phone and I’m like, crunching out pins after dinner on the bed and I’m just like, here can you look at these two really quick, which one looks better? This one I don’t feel good about. She’s like, pick that one. I’m like, OK. But I’m also a part of a blogger mastermind group that we have a Slack channel all we get together and we do Zoom calls and we just talk about what we’re working on. So I’ll throw stuff out there to them too, like, what do you think about this? I recently hired on a virtual assistant and she’s been helping me to get some feedback. And yeah.

JENNY GUY: Love, love, love. So you are using your wife who, I don’t know, does she have anything to do with any of this stuff? You’re just getting like a knee jerk reaction from her? I like getting a mix, like people who have nothing to do with that, what do you think about this? And then people who are industry insiders, and peers, and colleagues that you can say, tell me what you think?

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah, right. She uses Pinterest more than any other social media platform. She’s not one of those Facebook people. She’s very much on Pinterest all the time. No, she doesn’t blog or anything like that, but she is an online reseller. She has an eBay reselling business for her side hustle. So she’s very visually oriented, she’s also an artist. But for Pinterest and blogging, she doesn’t really know anything about it, I’m just going off the visual aesthetic reaction from her like, what do you think about that?

So she’s probably the one who’s probably the most outside of the bubble where we have the blogger mastermind people and my VA. So, yeah. That’s true, a mix of people will definitely give you probably a better result. Because not all the users will go into your– well, definitely not all of the users. Not a majority of them are going to be bloggers, but people who don’t even know about this stuff.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Right.

JENNY GUY: Absolutely. Same question to you, Nellie. How do you get feedback? How do you decide on that? I know you said that you go with your heart a lot, which I love.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: I do. I don’t get much feedback to be honest with you. I just try to figure out what’s working, what’s getting the most saves and what’s getting the most clicks, and just trying to recreate that in a more consistent manner

JENNY GUY: OK. Fair enough. Fair enough. So how often are you guys doing looks into your analytics on these different social media platforms and what metrics are you paying the most attention to? I’ll start with Nellie, since she was just talking about that.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: So daily. Every single day I log in, I check and see how my pins are doing. I like to see that little green upwards button, more saves, more clicks. So as long as I see that, I’m feeling good about things. I definitely want to see, when you go into Pinterest analytics you can see the best pins that have been performing that you created in the last 30 days. So I want to pay close attention to that because there’s certain pins that are going to do well no matter what, right. Like year round. But what have you created in the last 30 days that is doing exceptionally well?

So I want to pay attention to that and see the seasonal rises and falls. Also, another thing that I do is I check Pinterest trends all the time. Just to see what people are looking for and what’s coming up. And you’d be surprised sometimes. I’m like, wait, I have a recipe that I can just throw some pins up. So Pinterest trends is a really big driver for me as well.

JENNY GUY: Love that. OK. Daniella, same question to you.

DANIELLA FLORES: So I check my analytics, also, daily. The past three days are my big focus, and as a tip I want to throw out for the people that are really struggling with the Pinterest monster. You need to look in the last 30 days and maybe versus the 30 days before that. Look at what the period that you were doing really well on Pinterest and see what was best performing then, versus now. Because you’ll see that there’s probably a pin or two that dropped off, maybe bring back that style.

That analytics is going to be so helpful for you. At first I used– Pinterest is very spaghetti at the wall, I never looked at the analytics. And that’s when everything changed, is when I looked at the data and then started following that data. And trends too. Trends is one of the things that a lot of people forget about. You’ve got to look at what’s trending on Pinterest, especially this year, because things are a little different this year than they were in the previous years.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: People like Christmas right now.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah, they want Christmas yesterday.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Yes. They are like, I’m like, wait, what do you mean they’re searching for Christmas cookies? It’s like October.

JENNY GUY: What the heck else do we have going on?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: That’s true. That’s true.

JENNY GUY: I mean–

DANIELLA FLORES: If you look at the stats about bread baking when that was like huge because of COVID, it is insane. Because that was like the number one thing on Pinterest for like a month.

JENNY GUY: Cause everybody was like, we’re not going to have bread, and then the next thing would’ve been, we don’t have toilet paper. Everyone makes their own sourdough starters.

DANIELLA FLORES: DIY everything.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Everything.

JENNY GUY: So asking you this, if you are– so you’re checking your analytics daily, what sort of pivots or adjustments are you making based on when you go into your analytics? Tell me what is something that you do when you check that performance out. Nellie, tell us.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: So, basically, what I do in general is because I have so much content, I’ve been blogging for nine years. I like to take URLs, like I said, from the dead. So URLs that have not done anything in a while, or nobody’s been clicking on them in a long time, and I bring them back to Pinterest. I bring them back to life on Pinterest.

So I want to see in the last 30 days if any of those that I’ve created, that I’ve brought back from the dead, if those are working. And if they’re not working, maybe there’s something else I need to bring back. If they are working, let’s keep nourishing and watering that flower, so to say.

JENNY GUY: And how do you keep nourishing and watering? If you see something that’s working, what action do you take?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Well, I’ll create at least 10 pins for that piece of content during the week. So I’ll make sure to add that to the regular rotation of pins.

JENNY GUY: Love that. All right. Same question to you, Daniella.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah. So I also do the same thing where I go and I create content for those older pieces of articles that I haven’t put a pin out for in a while. I’ll create a variation, an image and video. As well as I’ll look at best performing boards, because for a while group boards were my focus in the beginning when group boards were– definitely got more traction.
And I’ve been looking into best performing boards a lot lately too. And I used to have a lot of my own group boards and I’m dropping them off, archiving them, putting more focus into Tailwind Tribes that I would have been putting in group boards before. So looking at group– not group boards, but board performance has been helping a lot too.

JENNY GUY: OK. We’re starting to run low on time, which is a bummer, but give us a Canva Easter egg. What is your thing that you don’t think people know about that’s like your hidden secret love. Daniella, tell us.

DANIELLA FLORES: Oh, I’m excited about this one. OK. So there is a little option in Canva, it is available for free and Pro and it’s called tidy up. So when you want to say, like on my media kit, I have a lot of these social media icons and they’re all strung across, and I want them to completely line up perfectly together. You just select them all, then you select position, and then tidy up. And then they’re just like perfect.

JENNY GUY: Same question to you.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Oh, that’s awesome because I don’t think I knew that one either. I mean, I think my only Easter egg would probably be– I mean, it’s not as fancy Daniella’s, but it’s really the video. There’s so much you can do with it. Just throw a video in there and just play around, there’s so much. Even if you’re not even creating a pin or whatever it is, wherever you have one of those background graphic images that you can fill with a photo, you can fill it with a video. So use the elements, use the templates that they have, and just use the video, and just try different things. It’s pretty awesome.

JENNY GUY: Are you taking in stuff? Are you talking about like, a 30-second video, a five minute video, what are you putting in there?

NELLIE ACEVEDO: It can go either way, honestly. So I’ve used, probably, up to a five minute video and I’ve used 30-second videos. And they both work fantastically. And Canva seems to have this unlimited upload system. So I just throw everything in Canva, and I let it stay there. And the cool thing is if you need it, you can download it again. And so it’s kind of a cool place to store things. I didn’t say that out loud, but you know what I mean.

JENNY GUY: You might. We won’t hold you to it, but that’s so great that you can put whatever you want in there and then just use it whenever you have the time. And all this is happening from your phone, correct? You’re not working on this on your laptop.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Oh, no. I do a lot of it on my laptop. My pins on my laptop, but if I have an Instagram or anything like that, it’s on my phone.

JENNY GUY: OK. All right, fantastic. So we like to wrap up with action items. This has been so helpful, so I would love to hear from both of you one top tip each for, one for Canva beginners and one for more advanced users. And these could be a new feature, or organization, or scheduling, we are totally open and our audience loves these actionable takeaways. And then I would also– once you’ve shared those tips I want to hear one more time about your offer that you have that you’re extending to Mediavine people. And I’m going to give you a second to think about those tips.

While I’m doing that, guys, our next episode of Teal Talk® is not for two weeks. We are back on Thursday, October 22, 3:00 PM Eastern, as always. Same bat time, same bat channel. We are speaking with Julia Li and Bianca Jochimsen of Google. We are talking about overcoming imposter syndrome to become a badass in the workplace. It is going to be an awesome conversation. I talked to them a couple weeks ago, we’ve been collaborating on this since we were going to have them speak in Baltimore at our Baltimore conference.

So this is almost a year in the making in terms of this session, and we are so thrilled to be able to bring it to you finally. They have so many tips about how to walk into conversations where, as bloggers we’re not tech people, but we are walking in to have tech conversations all the time. And I think that we constantly walk in feeling like we’re on our back foot. And they are going to give us action packed strategies that are going to help you walk in and not constantly feel like you’re at a disadvantage.

But let’s quickly get these awesome tips and hear those special offers. Daniella, let’s start with you. A tip for a beginner, a tip for a more advanced user, and then what are you offering our audience.

DANIELLA FLORES: So a tip for a beginner. So beginners probably, you’re going to have the free version and you might be hearing people say templates all the time. Templates, templates, templates. And when you want to try to share something as a template or create a template in Canva, it might not let you because that’s a Pro feature. But you can still create templates in Canva, you just use the same style or save that pin, just select Copy and you can use it as a template, essentially.

That’s something a lot of beginners– they forget about that you could still, essentially, use a template without having to use the template feature in Canva. An intermediate– is it intermediate tip too?

JENNY GUY: Advance, intermediate, whichever. But somebody who’s been using Canva for a while. For a hot minute.

DANIELLA FLORES: OK. For a hot minute. I mean, animations, poppin animations. They’re fun, they work great in Instagram and Pinterest, because Pinterest will see it as a video pin and they’ll boost it.

JENNY GUY: Love it. So start enjoying animations, is there a great help guide in Canva itself to talk about their animation capabilities?

DANIELLA FLORES: Yeah. Actually, when you do get Canva, there is a section on the top menu bar called learn. If you select to learn, they have tutorials on literally every part of Canva, from designing with Canva, using animations, design, marketing, branding, the whole shebang.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. And tell us about the offer that you’re giving for our audience.

DANIELLA FLORES: Yes. So tonight is the part three of the Canva Happy Hour, it happens at 8:00 PM Eastern, 7:00 PM Central. And we’ll be talking about– it’s called Crafting your Aesthetic. We’ll be crafting your brand aesthetic. We’ll be doing an actual logo creation workshop. We’re going to be going with this coffee shop prototype that we’ll be doing. And you’ll actually create this whole brand with us during the workshop, it’ll be really fun.

It is $10, but everybody on this will get 20% off with the code, Mediavine. And then 50% of all registration proceeds go to the Louisville Bail Fund.

JENNY GUY: I love that. And love that excellent humanitarian effort as well. Nellie, same question to you. Yes, for sure. A tip for a beginner, a tip for an intermediate or advanced user, and then what your special offer is for your templates.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: So my tip for beginners is that, I mean, what I hear a lot of is that they are overthinking a lot of the design. And I my tip would be to just put the words on the graphic and just start from there. And then improve as you must, as you need to. But honestly, when people are looking for something, they just need the words, they need a pretty picture, and they will save it and they’ll click through.

So let the picture stand for itself. And make sure that you are just not overthinking it with all the fonts, with all the colors, with everything else. If it has to be one font, one color, that works too. So really just try and not overthink things. That’s for my beginners.

JENNY GUY: Excellent. Very helpful.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: For my advanced people, I have to say, again, just like Daniella, the video is really hot right now. Just keep trying that. As far as design for Pinterest, I have noticed that my words on top have been working a lot better than words on a middle, and words on the bottom. So if anybody else wants to try I’ve gone exclusively top– sounds terrible, but I’ve gone exclusively top for the past two months or so. So just try that out and see if that works for you as well.

JENNY GUY: Love it. And tell us about your templates and the special offer please.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: So I have some Canva templates available. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a free user or a Pro user, you can use them, you can download them and use them for your content. And for everyone watching today until the end of October, if you use the promo code, MV20, you’ll get 20% off each package.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. So helpful. And Susan Self Blades just said, bye-bye PicMonkey, hello Canva. Thanks for the great info.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Sorry PicMonkey.

DANIELLA FLORES: Literally everyone has gone from PicMonkey to Canva.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Yes I have, 100%.

JENNY GUY: I love it. I love you guys. Thank you so much for being here. Friends at home, thank you for watching. We’re back in two weeks. Until that time, you can catch any replay on Facebook. We’re going to upload it to YouTube. Subscribe, like, and don’t miss another episode. And everybody, be thinking about your Halloween costumes because we’re going to be talking about that in the next episode. Thank you ladies, so much for being here.

NELLIE ACEVEDO: Bye.

DANIELLA FLORES: Bye.

JENNY GUY: Bye.

The post Teal Talk®: Design Your Way to Success with Daniella Flores & Schnelle Acevedo appeared first on Mediavine.

LaShawn Wiltz of Everyday Eyecandy joins Jenny Guy, our Director of Marketing, in a conversation about the new Instagram features and how you might want to distribute your time to maximize engagement.

LaShawn has a whole lot of knowledge on how Instagram and its algorithm works so you don’t want to miss this one! (Originally aired 9/24/2020)

Watch the video here or check out the transcript below.

Navigating the New Instagram

JENNY GUY: It is Thursday, September 24, and you are watching Teal Talk^®, the show where twice a month we force experts from the digital content creation industry to talk to me for an hour, sharing their expertise with our audience. I’m your host, Jenny Guy, Director of Marketing for Mediavine, and someone who has yet to have an edible pumpkin spice anything in 2020. This is criminal, and I feel like a failure.

It’s fall, or it’s autumn, which one do you guys say? I don’t know.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Fall.

JENNY GUY: Fall, fall. I like to say fall has fallen, but I was told that sounded kind of fatalistic, so, you know, whatever. Are you a fall or an autumn person? I have yet to– so, I haven’t had a pumpkin spice or anything, but I have lit up some very basic seasonal candles just to commemorate the season. Some apple stuff. So I feel like I’m in the mood.

But today I am so excited. Everyone’s saying they’re so excited. I’m so excited. We’re talking about something we either love to hate, or hate to love. Long story short, our relationship with Instagram is complicated. And guys, go ahead and kick us off right by telling us your favorite filter in the comments.

But however we feel about Instagram personally, we can say with certainty that a lot of brands that work with influencers love the ‘gram. And it’s a metric that a lot of people ask about and pay attention to. And my guest today is an Instagram whisper, and is here to help you harness the powers of that platform for the good of your business.

LaShawn Wiltz is the creator of Everyday Eyecandy where she blogs about motherhood, simple solutions for moms like her and her passion for capturing everyday moments through photography and Instagram. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, you can find LaShawn on Instagram, and we will share those links.

Capturing the beauty in life’s everyday moments. Documenting her days as a wife and mom with half-finished coffee in one hand and her camera in the other. She is wonderful. We’re so glad you’re here.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Thank you for having me.

JENNY GUY: OK. So. Guys, if you’re sharing a filter or just sharing love for LaShawn, either way, we will take both. I want to kick off by learning a little more about you, LaShawn. Your journey as a content creator and what brought you to Instagram, and why you love the platform so much that you teach others about it.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Well, it started off when I got my first iPhone. I was late. I was late to the iPhone game.

JENNY GUY: Samesies.

LASHAWN WILTZ: I got my first iPhone and I was like, I can get on Instagram now! I was a new blogger at the time. I just started blogging just because of my son. I like to post pictures of him. It was the easy way to let my family follow along, and I got on Instagram.

You know, back then it was just cute filters.

JENNY GUY: Sure.

LASHAWN WILTZ: And, you know, you just posted. And it went out there in the world, you didn’t worry about who saw it, it just went out there. And somewhere along the way people started wanting to pay me to post these pictures. And I was like, oh, OK. And it grew from there.
And I started randomly giving people advice. You know how–

JENNY GUY: Yes.

LASHAWN WILTZ: –somebody asks you, well what do you do, what are you doing. And you say it. And they say, oh that worked for me. You’re like, oh, so it works for other people, too. And it just kept going like that, because I love Instagram. I love Instagram mainly because of community.

I’ve been on there a long time now. My son is going to be turning eleven, so at least 8 years, maybe.

JENNY GUY: That’s awesome.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So I have a large community on Instagram that is actually a community. And I’ve always said, if you want to succeed on Instagram, you have to build a community because that’s where it is. And so I started teaching other people that.

And then people started asking me to talk about it. I was like, OK, and it grew from there. I think I love to teach about it because it’s like one of those things that I can talk about and not get bored. So that’s why I started going ahead and talking more about it.

JENNY GUY: I love that because that’s a totally different approach than what a lot of people would say with Instagram. And I also think it’s something that we always talk about on here, it’s that you have that expertise. That it’s not something you think that you’re necessarily an expert in, it’s just something you’re natural– like, you talk about it and people are like, whoa.

LASHAWN WILTZ: I just like it.

JENNY GUY: And you go, oh, it’s just what I do. I just like it and it happened.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yeah. I’m one of those people who are obsessed with it, you know. Somebody posts about it and I’m like, oh, what did you, did you do that. I’m always asking my friends, test this for me, could you do this. So, yeah, I love it.

JENNY GUY: That’s awesome. And I love the idea of creating a community. So we’re just going to jump right into the elephant in the room, whatever you want to call– whatever filter is on it. There’s no doubt that the Instagram algorithm is the source of a whole lot of hand-wringing and hair pulling amongst this influencer community.

And it happens at least, in part, because we have all seen, I’m sure, what Instagram popularity can do for your traffic, and your work with your brands, and your bottom line, really. It’s a thing. So how do content creators get out of this grind of comparing stats? And if you’d explain this by telling us, how does Instagram work?

LASHAWN WILTZ: OK. So the thing that everyone needs to understand about Instagram is Instagram has one goal. One goal. And that’s to keep you on the app as long as possible. So whatever you do on Instagram to keep someone on the app, i.e. on your post, or on your stories, or on your video, Instagram will reward you for it, because they’re like, yes, that is all they want.

That’s why video leads to more engagement. That’s why Stories and Reels work. Because people fall down the rabbit hole and they just keep watching, and clicking, and scrolling. And that’s what Instagram wants. And so as long as you make content with that thought in mind, you’ll succeed.

JENNY GUY: That is extremely helpful. So another thing that I think a lot of people have talked about, especially amongst the influencer community in recent years, is the buying followers. And the pods, and the giveaways, and the bots, and all of that. How do you feel about that type of thing in terms of buying followers versus– or giveaways, or I talk about that. I know you’ve heard it. We all have.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Another thing about the algorithm is– pods were originally made– the way pods were originally supposed to work weren’t this, but a group of accounts that were alike, that had similar type of content. They band together to help each other out.

Because back then it used to be that, if somebody gave you a like or a comment in the first 30 minutes after you post– 15 to 30 minutes after you posted, it would boost you in the algorithm. Not true anymore. But that was the original thing about it.

But the way the algorithm really works is that, when someone likes your post Instagram not only shows that person more of your content, but it shows a teeny portion of their followers your content, too. And because if they like it they think their followers might like it. But what happens is, when you have pods, it’s the same people liking your stuff each and every time. So you never get any more impressions, any more reach, than those people.

And then Instagram stops showing your content, because they’re like, OK, it’s the same people every time. The algorithm is smart. You cannot game it even though people think they can. So that’s why pods– I always say it’s OK to have, like, personal pods where you tell your friends, hey, I got a post up.

And in some pods that are– because of the algorithm, you might never see these people. If you have pods like that where you’re like, oh, friends, I posted something. You know, that’s fine. But those pods, those big pods, where it’s like thousands of people who they’re a car account and you’re a mom blogger, that does not mesh. Their followers won’t care one bit about your baby, at all. They care about cars.

So you know, things like that. Buying followers, it’s the same concept. These people don’t know you, they don’t like you. They like any and everything, and they confuse the algorithm because the algorithm’s like, I don’t know what they like so I don’t know where to categorize you.

And giveaways? Giveaways don’t really work because, I mean, they give you more followers in the short term. They work like that. But the problem is, most of these people either leave after the giveaway is over or become dead weight because they never engage with your content. And Instagram wants people to engage with your content.

And so that signals the algorithm that your content in trash, and then they don’t show it to anybody. So that’s how I feel about it.

JENNY GUY: Well, thank you. I mean, guys, I asked. If anyone’s out there– I’m the one who did this. I asked the question. That’s helpful. That’s really helpful because a lot of time, like we said, there’s a lot of pressure to have these high numbers and to engage.

What would you say– would you say that Instagram has really helped your work with brands? Like you said you were starting to get paid like, that’s how it began.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes. I can say right now, about 75% of my income comes from Instagram. And I always like to point that out because I’m not huge. I am not like this big, big, Instagrammer. You know what I mean? I have under 50,000 followers. But I have a core engaged audience.

So if I put a link up from a brand that I trust, and that they know I trust, they will swipe up. You know, they will click on it, and brands have figured that out. Sometimes you have to show them, but they figure that out. So I always say, if I can do it with my size following, anybody should be able to if you do what you’re supposed to do.

JENNY GUY: OK. Two questions. Follow ups. One, can you tell me about your– do you mind telling me how big you are? Two, will you tell us– you said sometimes you have to show them. Give us some tips on how you would show a brand. Demonstrate that type of selling power.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So I think I have 33,000 followers today. I know 33 and some change.

JENNY GUY: Loosely that, yes.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yeah, loosely that. But show– like for instance, I had a brand came to me last week. I told them what my rate was. And they came back and said, well with an account of your size usually this is what we pay.
And I proceeded to– I took screenshots of my analytics, of my last sponsored post that was like theirs. Same type of brand. And I showed them the back end. I was like, remember, likes on Instagram are not the same anymore. But I’m going to show you my back end, how much reach that post got, how many impressions that post got, and in the story, how many swipe ups that got to the brand’s link.

And they’re like, oh, OK, here you go. So I got my rate. And that was something I learned from one of my friends, but it worked. So I’ll always say, do it.

JENNY GUY: That’s awesome. I love that. And I love that you kept negotiating with the brand and let them know that size doesn’t matter. OK, not necessarily. It matters to a certain extent, but it’s not the only thing. And like you said–

LASHAWN WILTZ: It’s not the only thing.

JENNY GUY: –likes are very different now. We’re going to talk about that in a second. But how are likes different now? Let’s just jump in.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Likes are different because you got to think about the fact that there are some countries in the world where likes are not a factor anymore. They took them away. And in the US, of course, we still have them, the majority of accounts. There are a couple that don’t. But for the majority of the world, there is no likes.

So you got to think about that. And then a lot of people don’t hit like anymore. People are stingy with their likes now. People are more likely to comment, actually, than they are to like. I know I forget to do it sometimes. Sometimes I forget to like and then I have to go back and go, oh, oh, let me like this post.

JENNY GUY: Yes, same. Same.

LASHAWN WILTZ: And it’s like, you’ll see it, you’ll laugh about it, you’re engaged with it, you’ll read all the other comments, you’ll even like some of the other comments, but you won’t like the post. That’s how Instagram works these days. And so you always have to remind brands that is how it goes. Sometimes they need educating, so you just got to remind them.

JENNY GUY: Definitely. OK. So while we cannot control the Instagram algorithm, we are all about focusing on what we can control. So what should we focus on with our Instagram strategy now?

LASHAWN WILTZ: You should focus on Stories, Reels, and your engagement, which we talked a little bit about. But those are the three things that you really need to focus on right now because that is what matters to Instagram, and that’s what matters to brands. Even though they’re not going to come out and say it, but that’s what matters.

JENNY GUY: You may have to tell them that that’s what matters.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes.

JENNY GUY: But that is what they should be look– in terms of what’s going to give them the results, give them the return on their investment and working with you, it’s that. So let’s start with Stories because, I love a good Story. They’re my favorite.

LASHAWN WILTZ: I do too. So Stories are Instagram’s darling. It’s the one thing they stole from Snapchat that they made their own that actually is great. Everybody– people scroll this way now, instead of this way first. I know there are some days where I get on and I might scroll my Stories and get off.

JENNY GUY: Yes.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Not even look at my feed.

JENNY GUY: Same.

LASHAWN WILTZ: And I know other people do the same thing because Stories are entertaining. You know, they keep us on the app, which is what Instagram loves. They’re personal, it’s like being a voyeur. I always tell my clients, you are the reality show. That is why people are watching.
It’s like a reality show on your phone you can go to, you can come back to, and keep watching. That’s why good story matters, because you want to keep people engaged. They help with that like, know, trust factor.

JENNY GUY: Say that again. Talk to us about like, know, trust factor.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So when people like, know, and trust you they’re more likely to become your super fans and they’re more likely to click your links. They will always leave a comment. They will respond and heart every Story. And when you ask them to buy something, they will buy it. That’s what you want.

They will swipe up and go to your newsletter. They will get off the app, which– let me break and say that’s what your ultimate goal should always be. Get them off the app. Because we don’t own Instagram, Mark does. So get them off to something you own. OK. Off my soapbox.

JENNY GUY: No, but no it’s the truth. No, I love that. I love hearing that. And the truth is, yeah, they don’t own it so what you’re doing is at odds with Instagram. So how do you balance that out? Because you said their goal is to keep people on the app, your goal is to get them off the app onto your own stuff. So how do you balance that out?

LASHAWN WILTZ: So you balance that out. That’s part of the like, know, trust factor. Because if they don’t like, know, and trust you, which is what you do with Stories, you get them– you let them in. You let them see the you behind the frame, you know, and everything.

Which, once you do that, you can subtly direct them to, oh, do you want to know more about this meal I cooked, it’s on my blog. And then you put the little swipe up where you say, go to the link in my profile. They’ll go. Hopefully, on your blog, you have something where they can sign up for your email list and, you know, there you’ve got them. You have captured them.

That is why I always say Stories are the most important part because they help you with that like, know, trust factor. They help people like, know, and trust you so that they like you, and they click your links, and they swipe up, and they buy your things.

JENNY GUY: They become your people. They become your–

LASHAWN WILTZ: They become your super fans, your super fans. That’s what they are. Like Pat doesn’t know what you’re saying.

JENNY GUY: OK. So I’m going to pause you here because I want to hear– if you don’t follow LaShawn you should because she has amazing stuff. I find her Instagram Stories to be incredibly– they’re like my ASMR. I love listening, I love her music, I love her whole aesthetic. I love her coffee. Like, it all– And it becomes routine for me to watch, and listen, and engage with her.

So tell me, how do you make a great Instagram Story? And how do you decide? Because your aesthetic is so yours. It is yours so uniquely. How did you come to that?

LASHAWN WILTZ: So when someone goes through Stories you want them to know it’s yours. You want them to be able– because I know I follow people where even before I look up and see whose Story it is, I know even if they’re not in the frame, because of the aesthetic. Because of how it is, how it starts, how it goes.

What makes a good Instagram Story, is that it’s a story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, just like a story. So, you know, people always post, like, these one frames and then they leave. And I’m like, OK, that’s boring. No one’s going to come back to follow up to see what else went on, you know what I mean?

They’re going to quick tap through to the next person because you boring. And then you will not show up the next time that they’re on Instagram because, you know, they didn’t follow through. Bloggers, you know, we are all influencers. We are storytellers. We have to do the same thing on IG that we do on our blog, tell a story. So that’s what I always say.

People always say, well what do you post about? I’m like, your life. I think my life is boring, but my coffee Stories, that’s me. That’s one thing that’s mine. I have a friend who posts coffee Stories too, but hers are completely different than mine, and that’s OK.

So, you know, I watch her, because I think her’s are funny. You, know, she watches mine because mine are just different. So you have to find something that is your own, something that keeps people coming back, and go for it. Post it.

JENNY GUY: Yeah, post it. And trial and error is where that’s going to happen, right? I’m sure you didn’t wake up one morning and go, my coffee Story emerged fully formed from my brain.

LASHAWN WILTZ: No. I always say, everybody should have what I call content buckets. You should have them for your feed, and you should have them for Stories. Like things that you always– that you pull from that you always post about.

So for me it’s coffee, motherhood, work-life balance, health care, or me time. So every time I post on Instagram, it’s going to be about one of those things. I rarely deviate. Of course I’ll deviate for, like, important events, like, you know, current events that pertain to my life.

JENNY GUY: Of course

LASHAWN WILTZ: I will post about them. But for the most part, when you come to me you know that’s going to be something that you’re going to find. I’m even going talk about my son, my coffee, how much work I got to do, you know, you going to see me on my Peloton first thing in the morning. Something like that.

So you have to start making yourself a routine. It’s like you said, you want you to be a part of their lives, where you are part of their routine. So remember beginning, a middle, and an end though, please.

JENNY GUY: So in terms of the content buckets do you have, like, spreadsheets where you keep ideas for stuff that you know that work because– in case you run out? Like do you ever just go– I mean coffee is great because you’re going to drink that. That’s going to be every morning.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Every day.

JENNY GUY: You’re going to drink the coffee. So it’s there. But if, for other content, are there other, like, do you ever have ideas? How do you do that?

LASHAWN WILTZ: OK. So most of the time I have an editorial calendar for Instagram. And not only for my feed, but I have one for Stories. So I basically know, on a given day, what type of content I’m going to post. So I know if I talked about one piece of content a lot yesterday I might not talk about it as much the next day. I have it spread out.

So I might not know exactly what– no I’m lying, I know exactly what’s going to be posted, in general. Some of it’s live, some of it’s recorded, and some is just shared from other things that I’ve already found on Instagram. So it’s a planning thing, and that makes my life easier, too.

JENNY GUY: What do you use for your editorial calendar for Instagram?

LASHAWN WILTZ: A calendar.

JENNY GUY: OK, you just use a regular calendar. Awesome. I love it.

LASHAWN WILTZ: A basic planner. A basic planner. I’m like, yeah, you know. Yeah. I just need a basic planner.

JENNY GUY: It’s whatever works. OK, so Christine had a question. She said, I’m curious about LaShawn’s thoughts on longer text and feed posts. I know she’s focusing on Stories and Reels, but I still love the feed.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So Instagram is like micro-blogging these days. So the thing about the longer posts on your feed is, are you saying anything interesting. Are you keeping the user’s attention. So I always say if you’re going to have a long caption, you have to capture their attention in the first sentence, like when they’re scrolling. When they see, you know, because it cuts off after a certain amount of characters.

JENNY GUY: The ellipses, yeah.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yeah. You have to capture their attention with that first sentence. That’s what I call a call to action. You’re telling them, you’re asking them a question, you’re telling them to do something. You’re telling them to double tap, you’re telling them to post an emoji of how you felt today. Something in that first sentence that makes them want to stop their scroll.

Otherwise, they’re going to just keep going. And sometimes with a longer caption it’s better to put something at the beginning and at the end. Because, otherwise, they’re going to get bored. Unless they are loyal followers. Now your super fans will read everything. You know, they’re regular people, you’ve gotta capture their attention.

JENNY GUY: And that makes– that’s a lot of sense and you want to have, I’m sure, a balance of that content. I want to talk more about balancing all of the different things out. But I also want to talk– we talked about the new Instagram, and so let’s talk about Reels.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Ah, Reels.

JENNY GUY: Oh. Not a big fan, eh?

LASHAWN WILTZ: No, I actually like Reels. This is Instagram’s new baby because Instagram loves video. Let me repeat, they love video. I always say, whenever Instagram introduces something new you have to try it. You have to do it. Because whatever is new, that’s what they’re going to push.

And the main reason that you want to do Reels right now is for the potential. The reach, the discovery, the engagement. It’s crazy right now because Reels, of course, are being prioritized in all the ways that people search for content on IG. You can find when you open up the explore tab, it’s the first thing there. It’s the top piece of content that is on there. It is like they’re trying to force you to do it.

JENNY GUY: They really want you to like Reels.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes. If you do a hashtag search, it’s there right at the top. If you go to the Reels feed. Reels has its own feed, I mean, come on. And even if you do an audio search, like if you tap on the song that somebody used for Reels, it’ll take you to an audio search where it will show you every Reel that used that song.

It is so many ways that Instagram has made it so that you can find Reels. They want you to use Reels. And even today they just updated it so that they’re 30 seconds long instead of 15, and there’s a 10 second timer instead of a three second timer. So, I mean, Reels are here to stay. They want us to use them.

JENNY GUY: They’ve gone all in.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes, they have gone all in. So now we have to. So that’s my thing about Reels.

JENNY GUY: All right. So, Larisha asked a great question. She says, I’d love to hear tips on creating them, especially for people who did not, or do not, or refuse to, do TikTok.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So I don’t– any Reel that I create I don’t create in the app because it’s clunky. And until they fix that a little bit more I will not be creating in Instagram. So what I usually do is, even like when I did my 15 seconds of summer, because that was, like, the perfect way to do a Reel, I just recorded little scenes every day, all day. So, like, 5 seconds here, 5 seconds there.

And then you can stitch them together in an app. I use InShot, so it helps me to stitch together my Reels. And then I take the Reel into Instagram and add the music. Why? Because when you use it– it’s just like TikTok in that regard– is when you add the music in the app it will boost you in the algorithm more than if you use your own music.

JENNY GUY: So My Quiet Kitchen, good question. Ugh, Reels, what is it, and what should we put in them? I mean, fair enough.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So they can be anything. They can be fun. They can be– I’ve seen Reels where they’re, what do they call it, educational. Like there are people who do quick little cooking videos, cooking Reels. There are people who do quick informational– like there’s one girl, she talks about IG a lot. She does little informational Reels.

There are people who do funny Reels. There are people who just do the snap Reel where they’re changing clothes. They are basic. Don’t over think it. You can sit there and just snap, snap, snap, and change clothes if you’re a fashion blogger.

You can sit there and do a quick this is how you boil an egg. Simple things like quick bites of content. That’s it. And now they’re 30 seconds long so you can get a little bit more content in them. 15 seconds was kind of hard, but 30 seconds you can definitely get more into them.

JENNY GUY: Love that. OK.

LASHAWN WILTZ: It’s just, don’t think too hard, just do it.

JENNY GUY: Jump in. Jump in, make a Reel. Do it today. Engagement. Let’s talk about that.

LASHAWN WILTZ: All right.

JENNY GUY: Because you’ve said likes are different. So what are we looking at if we’re not looking at likes as much?

LASHAWN WILTZ: So saves and shares are the new likes on the ‘gram.

JENNY GUY: OK.

LASHAWN WILTZ: OK. So, why? Because it gets your content in front of more people. It makes people physically interact with your post, which is important. Because when people physically do something to your post like comment, like or share it, or save it, Instagram is like, oh, they’re on the app longer.

Remember? That’s what Instagram wants. That’s all they want. So remember, engagement is down right now, which is–

JENNY GUY: Overall.

LASHAWN WILTZ: –which is a question I always get from people. I always have to remind people, especially right now, you have to look at what else is going on in the world. People are tired. This is not going to be– Instagram is always like this. It goes in cycles.

And really, in September it’s always down, mainly because people’s kids are going back to school. Parents are trying to get back into their rhythm. And with the way the world is right now, we’ve got virtual school over here, we got people trying to do Zooms all day, you’ve got to manage everything, and people are tired of being online.

JENNY GUY: Yeah.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So it’s not us, it’s them. But this too shall pass, as it always does. I always say, keep doing what you’re doing, because when people come back in full force you want Instagram to still know you’re there. Because if you thought, just because you’re like, oh, ain’t nobody watching anyway, then when people come back, you’re behind.

So I always say keep going. And one more thing that I have to say. One reason why engagement is down for a lot of people, especially a lot of influencers, is because you didn’t pivot during Covid. You did not pivot.
People are at home and you were still posting these aspirational, I’m going on this fabulous trip, look at this fabulous trip I went to last year. Don’t nobody care no more. That’s the thing. Now it’s all about relatable content.

How can they relate to you?

You can have relatable aspirational content, but you have to spin it that way. Just continuing to post your fashion posts with no context. You know, not saying this is my outfit for Zoom today instead of saying, oh, look at me, this cute sale I went to at Target. You know? Some people lost their job, they don’t have money. You know what I mean?

JENNY GUY: Yeah.

LASHAWN WILTZ: You have to know your audience. If your audience is not responding to your content most likely there is a reason and you are it. So you have to learn to pivot and see what do they want. What do they want from me now.

And find out. You can do that simply as just, like, poll your audience. They will tell you. People have no shame, they want to give their opinion. So that’s my soapbox that I’ll get off of now.

JENNY GUY: I think it’s a great– it’s a good soapbox to be on. And as you were saying, we’ve been in here for six months. You don’t know what people want. And like you said, if you don’t know, ask. Why not? Why not just ask?

LASHAWN WILTZ: Ask. Instagram has those lovely polls, and question boxes, and then when people like–

JENNY GUY: I don’t have to type. You can just push the button.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes. And when people comment and like and use your polls and everything, that gives you engagement. So I’m always, like, come on, people. Just do it. Just do it.

JENNY GUY: So Quiet Kitchen said, perfect, love that explanation with regard to Reels. Carly Anderson says, yes, the pivot, yes, yes, yes. Sally says I love LaShawn. Larisha says, keeping up with trends, pivoting, literally all helps so much. So smart.

All right. So I’m going to follow up. When you were talking about shares and saves being the new likes, love that. What have you seen with the type of content that encourages those saves, encourages those shares.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So things like educational content. Like if you’re educating somebody. Memes. Right now, memes are– memes are hot.

JENNY GUY: Memes are life.

LASHAWN WILTZ: That’s an old way to put it. People will share–

JENNY GUY: Give me memes, give me gifs, and give me carbs, and I’m done for the rest of my life.

LASHAWN WILTZ: People will share a meme. People will share a good infographic. People will share a good carousel post that educates. I always say, every once in awhile– I have like a, what do I call it, Instagram mastermind– and we always say, every once in awhile, you need to share one of those posts that make people click and save.

It’s just– that’s something you need to start incorporating into your strategy. Either it’s a joke, it’s a recipe. Oh, you can say, save this recipe for later. Or you a graphic, or a craft, anything tell them to save it so that they can.

JENNY GUY: Very smart, love it. It’s just as simple as telling them to save it.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes.

JENNY GUY: I’m sure it makes a huge difference as opposed to thinking that people do know that they should.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Right. No, you have to tell people what to do. It’s a fact.

JENNY GUY: Always. Always. We’re getting lots of informative carousels right now. Sally says LaShawn has helped me with my Instagram account. She knows what she’s talking about.

LASHAWN WILTZ: I know Sally.

JENNY GUY: She’s a smart cookie. Quiet Kitchen says, you guys have done this brilliantly. Thank you. I don’t know if that was for LaShawn or Mediavine, but either way, we’ll both take it, and we love it.

OK. So how do you balance all those different forms of content out? How do you take Stories, Reels and your feed and get a cohesive Instagram strategy that works for you?

LASHAWN WILTZ: So like I mentioned earlier, I have a content calendar. I literally, every Sunday, I plan out my week. Not only plan out like what I’m going to post on my blog, I plan out what I’m going to post on Instagram. And I can always tell the weeks when I’m successful.

So, like, last week, I was not successful. This week I’m doing a little bit better. But it’s like, if you plan stuff out it’s easier to remain consistent. So, just like I said, I have the content buckets. I plan my Instagram within an inch of its life.

I know what I’m going to post on Stories. Sometimes I do what I call, I say, be a part of that prerecord life. I will prerecord stuff, and I have folders on my phone that say “for Instagram.” And I have folders that say “for Instagram Stories.” Even in Instagram, if I see a meme, or I see a post that I know I’m going to share sooner or later, I save it to a folder called “to share to Stories.”

Just so that I already have that content ready, pulled up, and I can just share it and keep it moving. If I’m going to do a post, I already write out that caption beforehand, I’ve already picked my hashtags. I do this for the week. That way I’m not scrambling at the last minute trying to say, oh, I need to post, what am I going to post. I don’t have any of that.

I have a friend who plans a month ahead. I’m not like that, but the concept is the same. Like I said, choose your content buckets. I’m always about that prerecord life. Pre-write your IG captions.

And my favorite tip is, don’t go on Instagram. So people are always like, well, what do you mean, you’re always responding to your Stories and everything. I’m like, I’m responding from Facebook. I am not on the actual app because the app is a time suck. I will start scrolling and watching people’s stories.

But on Facebook, all I can do is see when people respond. And I’m on there. So I have specific times where I can go on Facebook anyway, just like Instagram. And so then I will respond to all my comments and then keep it moving, but I’m not on the app.

I spend about no more than two hours a day on that app, if that, on a good day. So that’s on a busy day. I have time limits, because otherwise I will– I got too much else– too many other things to do. I can’t be on Instagram. And I’ve learned that that is the only way to have a life. Stay off the app.

JENNY GUY: And I love that. It’s so smart. It’s hard. So Larisha says, it’s exhausting, but it’s worth it. Schnelle says, dedicated to the craft, I love it. Suzanne says, this is gold, thank you. Jennifer says, I do the Story share folder. That folder to share within the phone is brilliant.

Brenda says, that is so smart to save things to share in Stories later. I feel like I’ll see things in bunches and on some days, not so much, so it’s a good idea to save it.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Exactly.

JENNY GUY: And cue it up. Jennifer says, how can you respond on Facebook? I think I broke something.

LASHAWN WILTZ: You responded? I don’t know. Oh, oh you mean on Instagram. Oh, so you can either do it in Creator, Facebook Creator account, or mine is connected to my alerts. I think you have to agree to it.

So when I go on Instagram I see the alerts for IG as well as the regular. So sometimes, I mean, my inbox is busy, because I do respond to lots of my people. And I purposely create content that makes them want to respond, because the algorithm likes you that way.

So it takes me– it takes me a while. So I see a lot of responses. But I have a set time, like it’s a timer, I only let myself stay on for like 10 minutes answering those questions real quick, and then I get off. The only time I’m really on Instagram is early in the morning and in the evening.

Like most of the time I post a post in the evening, so that’s usually when I’m on. Or I post once early in the morning. And usually for Stories I go on briefly and post something, because I already have it ready. Or either I’m getting ready to record it right then and it’s going on. So that’s all.

JENNY GUY: Love. Now are you using– so Jennifer is saying, Facebook Creator, she’ll look for that. On desktop are you using it?

LASHAWN WILTZ: On desk– on desktop. Or there’s also an app, if you just want to go on and look at just your responses on Stories, Facebook’s Threads app actually will let you do that. And the thing about Threads app is, you can record Stories in there.

And you know how we always tell you to caption in your Stories, it will caption them for you.

JENNY GUY: Oh.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yeah. Just something to think about.

JENNY GUY: OK. So you said you don’t personally scroll, you’re not on there for longer than two hours a day, you’re using Facebook to keep you from going down the rabbit hole. How much actual content are you posting via all these different places a day? Like, what’s an average for you?

LASHAWN WILTZ: I don’t post on my feed everyday. My feed is maybe every other day. But on Instagram Stories, remember they have a beginning, a middle, and an end, so that’s at least three frames for me.

JENNY GUY: Got it.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So I usually post a group in the morning, in the early morning. I post a group mid-morning around 10:00-ish, 11:00-ish. I post again around 11:00 or 1:00-ish, something like that. Usually I put a transitional post in between. That’s usually one of those memes or a post that I’m sharing. I call them transitional posts.

Then I post something around dinnertime and maybe in the evening. So maybe four times a day. But that’s by design, because it keeps me constantly in the little– when they first come on I’m there. It’s something new for them to see. So that’s what I do.

JENNY GUY: Very smart. OK. Question for you from Jenny Fielding. What should travel influencers be posting while we can’t travel? My niche is cruise travel so I’m very wary of posting irrelevant content that’s not about cruising, should I be?

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes. So unless you’re posting about how you are cruising during COVID. And no one is cruising during COVID right now.

JENNY GUY: If it were an option, please don’t.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Right. This is where you have to have the pivot. You either have to start talking about other aspects of travel and what you can do now, because that’s what keeps you in a niche, but it’s a broader niche. And this is also a time for you to branch out.

I always say, this whole year has forced all of us to find another content bucket. So now it’s time for you to pivot and find another content bucket. That’s the only way you’re going to stay relevant, because like you said, no one is cruising right now. I mean, when we start cruising again, maybe. Then you can be like, yes, this is how we cruise with COVID. But right now, no. I mean, no.

JENNY GUY: Yeah, yeah, totally. OK. So Jennifer says, I can type faster on my computer, this will save me so much time. You may have changed my life. Christine Koh said again, what’s the app that captions Stories, Story videos.

LASHAWN WILTZ: It’s called Threads. T-H-R-E-A-D-S. You know, threads, just like threads. And it looks like a little Instagram box with a circle in it, like a video.

JENNY GUY: Brenda says, I just go to my Instagram account directly on my desktop and reply to things there. It’s much easier for me to avoid the time suck on my phone.

LASHAWN WILTZ: See. See. We don’t have time to have time sucks anymore. At least, I know I don’t. So that is the way to get it done and still respond to your people, because they need responses. We’re not Beyonce, we must respond to our comments.

JENNY GUY: True.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So that’s a good way to do it and still save yourself time.

JENNY GUY: It’s such a crying shame that we’re not Beyonce. God.

LASHAWN WILTZ: I just want her money, but moving on.

JENNY GUY: I mean, yeah, it’s the woe of my life. Somebody– somebody respond to my Instagram comments. The peasants need to be responded to. OK.

Jenny Fielding says, also would love to know how much time we should spend engaging on other people’s content, and how important is that as a part of your Instagram strategy to growth?

LASHAWN WILTZ: So you have to use Instagram like a regular person. Posting and ghosting does not work. So I have– you know those folders on Instagram where you can save things? Every day I have a different folder, or group of people in those folders, where I go to their content every day, and I make sure that I comment on those people.

Now some of those people are what I call my super fans. The people who always comment on my stuff. I may not follow them but I try to at least once a week go in and comment on their stuff. Some of my friends are in that folder because I’m not on Instagram all the time, so I might miss their post.
So that is the way I keep up, in general. And then in the morning, in the evening, when I have what I call free time on Instagram–

JENNY GUY: Right.

LASHAWN WILTZ: –that’s when I just scroll and like. That’s when I go on the explore feed and I see what’s going on there. That’s when I’ll just go through and if I see an interesting comment, I might go to that person’s feed and look, like, oh, that’s nice. But it’s constantly using the app like a real person. You still have to do that. Just set aside 15 minutes. Set a timer. Go for it.

JENNY GUY: And we had heard earlier this summer that you have to, if you’re using your business account, if you’re using your branded account, you need to be strategic about what it is that you are liking and following because you’re teaching the algorithm that entire time. So if I’m like–

LASHAWN WILTZ: Sure are.

JENNY GUY: –if I’m a vegan blogger and I’m like a closet– and I’m sorry, I don’t think anyone out there is– but I’m like a closet bacon person and I go like all the bacon accounts in the dark of night when no one is there, they know, right?

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes. That is why I have a whole separate private account where I follow a whole bunch of stuff on there that I would never follow on my regular place. That account is ratchet. But, you know, that is like my follow all the things that don’t have anything to do with my brand, you know, person.

So people are always like, oh, you didn’t follow me back. I’m like, no, I didn’t, I’m sorry. And it’s nothing personal. I might follow you on my personal account, but not on that one. So, yeah, you have to be strategic about that.

JENNY GUY: I love that. Larisha says, I’d love to hear LaShawn discuss any tips on diversifying content between Reels, Stories, feed and IGTV. We have not hit on IGTV yet.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Diversify how? So are you meaning like what type of content?

JENNY GUY: I think she’s saying, and I asked this a little bit earlier, how much are you focusing. You said you post on your feed every other day usually.

LASHAWN WILTZ: That’s me.

JENNY GUY: And about three feed posts a week, roughly. And then you’re doing about– you’re doing four bursts of three Stories a piece a day. So how much of that is Reels, and then do you do IGTV?

LASHAWN WILTZ: IGTV. [SIGHS] I hate IGTV. I’m not even going to lie. I do it every once in a while, though, because Instagram still likes it. So I always say, depends on what your brand is.

Larisha, you do food, right? So I would say, for you especially, IGTV should be big. You should be making food videos. You should be making quick little food Reels. You should be posting, you know, your food in Stories.

Shopping in Covid times. How to– you guys are vegan or vegetarian now? I can’t remember. But things like that is what you should be doing. You can spread it out, little bite size pieces of content everywhere. You don’t have to do it every day because that’s just too much.

None of us are super like that, unless you plan ahead. But I would say, at least once a week you need to use one of Instagram’s favorite things. Reels, Stories, IGTV, you need to use them.

JENNY GUY: And I think that’s what she just clarified in her question. She said how do you keep up with it all, basically. And that, yes, you said at least once a week it’s a good thing for yourself to go and try one, even if you don’t like it, try one of their things.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Right. And that’s another thing that has to do with planning. If you plan it out, it’s easier to keep up. So if you plan at the beginning of the week, you know you need a Reel. You know you need an IGTV. You know, you can split some of your IGTV and make a Reel out of it.

You know what I mean? You can post your Reel to your feed, and that is a feed post. You have to be strategic and also save yourself time. But plan. Plan it out.

JENNY GUY: Plan. Planning is so important. And however you choose to plan.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes.

JENNY GUY: A planner of her own. Just a paper planner, which I love. Is it a fancy paper planner?

LASHAWN WILTZ: No. It’s a basic one from Dollar Tree. And it’s just for Instagram. I wish I had it with me, but I don’t. But it’s just for Instagram. It’s just basic. And it has the weekly one sheet, and I use that for stories. Yeah, it’s basic.

JENNY GUY: I love that.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Basic.

JENNY GUY: Tiffany says, hi LaShawn. When you say you share your favorites to folders is it actually in Instagram? And Jennifer said yes, Tiffany, when you click save there’s an option to put it in– create a folder.

So how many folders do you have? Do you use those a lot? She’s embarrassed about her folders. Y’all, I’ve uncovered a secret.

LASHAWN WILTZ: OK. I have over 30 folders. I’m not going to keep counting.

JENNY GUY: Wow.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Because I have different– because sometimes I’ll save accounts because some of my clients, I’m interested in showing them something from them. Or sometimes I have categories of people. Sometimes I’m doing research. So I have folders for everything. I use those folders.

JENNY GUY: So you mentioned clients. Tell us a little bit more about what you mean by clients.

LASHAWN WILTZ: I do Instagram strategy reports where it’s like a one on one with me where I deep dive into your Instagram. I basically tear it apart. And I tell you what you should be posting, what you’re doing wrong, what you could do to improve.

I give you a whole plan. Basically, those content buckets, I tell you what they should be, what I think they should be.

JENNY GUY: Great. Yeah.

LASHAWN WILTZ: I help you with Stories, Reels now, IGTV ideas, plans, I give you homework. And we do it with a Zoom call, too. So it’s like a whole thing.

JENNY GUY: Yes. There are all sorts of things that you have. You do the one on one consultations. You also have– and you have an Instagram book. You have a book that you have to offer that we’re going to actually share all the things in there. So tell us– and this isn’t something that we’ve talked about yet but, hashtags on Instagram.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Oh, hashtags. I hate hashtags. Right now hashtags are not doing what they usually do.

JENNY GUY: OK. Fair enough.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Instagram is tweaking something I do believe. But hashtags, I always say, are the keywords of Instagram. They help Instagram group us into categories and things like that. So it’s good to use hashtags to help people find you.

They’re like exposure. You’re not necessarily going to get a follow from it like you used to. You might not even get a like from it, because people scroll. But you will get that impression. You will get that reach from the hashtag.
So that is something to consider. I always say, you can get banned, shadow banned, they want to say, for spammy behavior with hashtags. Like using too many, using the same ones over and over again. Using what they actually have as banned hashtags.

So I always say, with your hashtag strategy, be careful. Lately, I’m trying to use less hashtags–

JENNY GUY: OK.

LASHAWN WILTZ: –simply because I want to train Instagram to recognize my posts without so many of them. So that’s just my new thing right now that I’m trying.

JENNY GUY: Give us some numbers. Give us a ballpark on what is too many. Or what is less than what–

LASHAWN WILTZ: I would say 10 is a good number to use.

JENNY GUY: OK.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Anything over that you are– I mean, you can use them. But it’s more about the combination of hashtags. And are you using hashtags that are too big. Because some of them are huge. You’re not going to get seen unless you, too, are huge.

I always say, the smaller ones, like the 50k to 100k, in that range, those are community-like. So people are in those actually looking for stuff. Anything under 50k, you run the risk of not that many people being in it and not that many people using it. So that is a thought.

JENNY GUY: It’s a lot like keyword research and SEO. Like you said, they’re the keywords words of Instagram. You’re looking for the low hanging fruit that you can actually make an impact on as opposed to–

LASHAWN WILTZ: That’s exactly it.

JENNY GUY: — I’m going to try and knock Beyonce out of this hashtag.

LASHAWN WILTZ: So instead of saying– right– instead of saying food, which has millions of searches.

JENNY GUY: Right.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Even instead of saying vegan, you might want to say vegan casserole. You know what I mean? Something like that. Break it– niche it down when you think about hashtags.

JENNY GUY: I love that. And we put this in the comments, we’re going to get back to your questions here in a second.

But if you go to any of LaShawn’s great stuff, from the Instagram one on one strategy sessions, to her book and she’s also got a Stories course that’s in there, you get 10% off. You get that discount with the code MEDIAVINE in all caps. That’s in there.

How long is that good for LaShawn? How long will you let people use that?

LASHAWN WILTZ: Oh, you can use it infinity right now

JENNY GUY: Infinity! That’s my kind of code. So go over and check out everything she has to offer if you need more, because I certainly need more. I’m very interested to hear about her Stories course. OK.

Larisha said, since you aren’t a huge fan of IGTV, I’m curious if you will pivot to doing more of them now that Instagram is in alpha testing of ad revenue of Instagram TV?

And I actually wanted to get into this before Larisha mentioned it. Ads are becoming a thing.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes, yes. Of course. That’s why I always say, I always add one eventually. Like I don’t aban– I hate them. But I will do one because I know that, eventually, they are going to add ads to them. And I want the content there when they do.

So I, let me see, I did one maybe a week or two ago. But I try to do one at least every couple weeks, or at least once a month. Right now, it’s really once a month, I’m not gonna lie. So as the holidays come there are more opportunities to do IGTV.

I used to do them a lot last year, but things are different this year so I didn’t do them as much. So that is something I need to get back to. But yes, I do always tell people in my strategy do as I say, not as I do. Do more IGTV because they’re going to have ads.

JENNY GUY: We’re also hearing that there’s a rumor going around out there that the Instagram algorithm favors ads. What are some better resources to understand how ads are working on Instagram and if they should become a part of your strategy.

LASHAWN WILTZ: It’s like, well, listen, Mark owns Instagram like he owns Facebook. And you know Facebook is pay to play now. It really is. Instagram, I believe, is heading that way, albeit a little slower than Facebook got there. Facebook, just, one day we were fine and then one day it was like, bam.

Instagram is taking its time getting there, mainly because no one is taking the bait. Big brands are, but influencers, we are not taking the bait, yet. It is a way, if you do it right, to get your content in front of more people by boosting and things like that.

But once you do it once, just like Facebook, you have to keep doing it. So just one thing to think about.

JENNY GUY: It’s like when you shave your legs. You can’t go back.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yes. You can’t go back. I mean you’re just prickly. If you color your hair, you got to keep going.

JENNY GUY: Well, you don’t.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yeah, now you should see all this gray. Moving on.

JENNY GUY: Everyone’s like, I love that choice you made. I’m like, it was a real great choice, wasn’t it? Not a choice. All right.

LASHAWN WILTZ: This is life. Yep.

JENNY GUY: It’s just the way it is, and I’m here now.

So Brenda says, I started using hashtags a bit more intentionally a couple months ago and it has been slowly helping me grow my count. Slow and steady, but it’s working for me for organic growth because my account is small.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yay. And that’s the thing about Instagram now. We cannot expect the monstrous growth that you used to even two, three years ago. Everything is slow and steady on Instagram now. So you cannot judge your growth by one post or even, you say, oh, I posted every day for a week, and nothing happened.

No. You got to do it consistently over a longer period of time. I will say, though, Reels, if you really– right now– if you want to really grow do a Reel every day. Watch them come in.

JENNY GUY: Love that. All right. So we are, unfortunately, about out of time, which I dislike because this has been an awesome hour. And so much to learn. I’m going to make an announcement real quick. But before, I’m going to give you the final question.

Which, I want to know what accounts do you follow that are inspirational for you in terms of learning? Either about Instagram or just learning about how to create beautiful posts. So it can be straight up knowledge for Instagram, or it can be your favorite accounts to follow just to look at beautiful stuff and to talk about the anatomy of a great post.

Guys, the next episode of Teal Talk^®— we are not on next week, but we are back in October. Thursday, October 8 at 3 PM Eastern time. I have Daniella Flores of I Like To Dabble and Schnelle Acevedo of Brooklyn Active Mama. We are talking about living your best graphic design life with Canva.

We’re going to get into branding. We’re going to get into organization. We’re going to get into, obviously, social media templates and how to create the things you want for that. But take it beyond that and how to really organize what you have on Canva. And use some of their new tools that are out and how to maximize those for content creators.

So that is October 8, don’t miss it. If you are a fan of our show, and I certainly hope you are, and you want to see more of this great content from people like LaShawn, and Schnelle, and Daniella, please like us on Facebook at Mediavine.

Go to our YouTube. That’s where all the episodes go when they’re done, they’re edited, and they are on our YouTube channel forever. And they’re also always still available on Facebook. So we want you to watch these.
We’re not going to hide them from you. Promise you that. LaShawn, tell us about those Instagram accounts that we have to go follow right now.

LASHAWN WILTZ: OK. First one is Cookayemonster. Kay is, she’s not even– she’s a photographer. And normally I would not follow her because she does a lot of fashion posts, but her Stories are excellent, they are marvelous. They are beautiful. They are creative.

And I spend a lot of time stealing her filters and things like that, because she is truly awesome and a creative and it’s very inspirational for me. Shavonda, S. Gardner Style, she is a, what do they call it? A home decorator account.

JENNY GUY: A DIYer.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Yeah, DIYer. Her home is beautiful. She lives in Sacramento. But what I like about her account is the engagement. She has an actual community.

And the way– like if you look at her Stories, and even her posts, the way she interacts with her audience, I love that. And so I’m always following her for tips and things like that.

Style Fit Fatty does an excellent job of the share and save type posts.

JENNY GUY: Yes.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Excellent job with it. And you don’t even realize that’s what she’s doing to you.

JENNY GUY: Which is the best way to do it, of course.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Right. Unless you’re like an Instagram nerd and you’re like, oh, I see what she did there. It’s very subtle, and her aesthetic is beautiful. Her family is beautiful. And you’re just like, oh, I just like her. I want to like her post.

A-S-E-K-Y-B. And she does have a pretty account. When you say you want– everybody is like, well what does a cohesive account look like? That is what it looks like. It’s just her family, you know, and they’re cute. She has the cutest kids.

But they all– it flows together. Everything she does flows, from the filter she uses, the content. So I’m always like, do that, do that, do that.

Jennifer, who is on here. Jennifer Borget. Just because it’s, once again, it’s one of those pretty cohesive accounts. And then even in her Stories the way it all– like her Stories and her feed usually flows together. So that’s always– I always say that’s a good thing to do.

For Instagram, there are not a lot of really good accounts on there. I’m not gonna lie. Some of them don’t always do the right thing. But there is one. What is her name. Natasha. Sol Studio Marketing.

And you all should follow her right now because she’s doing a 30-day Reels challenge. And she’s teaching about Reels as she learns about it. So I’ve been finding that fascinating. And I think she’s going to have a real course at the end of the 30 days.

So if you’re interested in that, that’s the type of thing– you might be interested in her. I do like her, though, yeah. That’s it.

JENNY GUY: And follow LaShawn, obviously, at Everyday Eyecandy. Go there.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Oh, yeah, me!

JENNY GUY: Yeah. Follow her. Love it. Coffee Stories. Can’t get enough. And definitely use the code MEDIAVINE, all caps, to get 10% off all of her excellent Instagram help and trainings.

And if you really feel like you just need a deep dive she’s there, she’s available. LaShawn, it’s been so good to have you. Thank you so much for your time.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Thank you for having me.

JENNY GUY: You’ve been a delight. OK. Everybody, we’ll see you in two weeks. Go out and get a pumpkin spice latte something, and enjoy the season. Bye, you guys. Thank you.

LASHAWN WILTZ: Bye, guys.

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That’s part of why we named our second Facebook Live show ‘Teal Talk^®.’ Well that, and it’s a fun play on ‘real talk,’ which is what each guest that our Mediavine Marketing Manager Jenny Guy interviews delivers.

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