Social Media Expert – Incredible Blogger – Content Marketing Manager
This month in Champ Life Series we have Lisa Sicard on board with us to share some great blogging tips & bits of advice.
Lisa Sicard of Inspire To Thrive is a long time blogger and an influencer. In that time she switched from working at a newspaper to becoming self-employed months ago.
She wrote a book titled “How To Tweet And Thrive On Twitter” in 2017.
Since becoming self-employed, she’s started writing more often on her site.
Topics include blogging, social media, and business tips. She has helped many small businesses plan their marketing with newspaper ads.
I’m sure after you learn a bit more about her, you’re going to check her business and blog out.
Question #1:
Before your social media expert journey began, your early history seems quite interesting. Tell us more about it? As for we know, you studied web design and graphic arts, even when the web did not exist, what were the challenges you had to face?
Yes, I was a graphic artist in my late teens. I started working at a weekly newspaper typing classified ads (at the age of 14), and then they taught me to create display ads. Then I went on to a vo-tech high school for graphic arts.
I went on to work as a printer (which I found boring) and then other newspapers. After that, I got a degree in fine arts going part-time while working full time. I later got into sales and marketing at the newspapers to make more money.
I started selling digital ads, the newspaper I worked with was the first in the country to have a website. Many years later I ran a retail website part-time, a medical scrub site, and that’s what got me tweeting and then Inspire To Thrive was born.
People were asking me about my Twitter use, and so I decided to blog about it.
Question #2:
You started your blog Inspire To Thrive in August 2011. What led you to create it and was it your first blog?
It was not my first blog. I blogged at Fancy Scrubs, a medical scrub website I ran.
I had another free WordPress site for high technology scrubs. When I started Inspire To Thrive, it was on Blogger.
Big mistake!
It was a nightmare going to WordPress from there.
Question #3:
What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and the obstacles you’ve overcome with your blog? If you had to start over, what would you do differently?
My biggest challenges were technical. I spent hours and hours fixing things and learning things. Now, I have hired a techie and wish I had sooner.
I do like knowing the how’s and why of WordPress, so I can help myself first. Also, I took some HTML classes, so I have some knowledge of code.
Question #4:
Content creation is a great skill, but getting more eyes on your content is another story! Many bloggers are incredible with their content but unfortunately can’t drive traffic. What is your magic to increase the blog’s traffic?
I really don’t have any magic.
I just comment on other sites and engage with others on social media.
Triberr has been great for me with Twitter and LinkedIn. Facebook is almost catching up this year since I’ve done more with the page and have generated more likes – it starts to snowball.
I’ve recently hired an SEO freelancer this year to help drive more traffic. It’s not easy!
Question #5:
Have you found anything particularly helpful or advantageous through your blog, or have you gotten the feedback of your blog being valuable to somebody? How does it feel?
Yes, many times. It’s great to know that being social media expert you can help someone else.
People have been reaching out to me on Quora, Twitter, FB page and LinkedIn about the Twitter suspensions and such. Others reach out about Facebook issues.
I just helped another figure out how to do stories for their page as they didn’t have the option. I found a workaround I used for myself 🙂
Question #6:
Do you sometimes feel unproductive? If you do, what do you think are the leading causes in your case? How do you get over the “Writer’s Block”?
Oh yes, often.
I wish I could write more, I wish I could do more video.
“It is much easier to write from your experiences than writing about something you are not so familiar with.
Being a Social media expert, I just don’t seem to have as much time with client work today. I have over a dozen clients that I manage social media for and I also consult about 10 hours a week – some weeks more and other weeks less.
Question #7:
What got you interested in social media and what was the first social media platform you adopted?
The Fancy Scrubs website. I sold my largest scrub order via a tweet. I haven’t stopped tweeting since.
Question #8:
As far as we’ve researched, Twitter seems to be your favorite platform. What makes Twitter stand out the most?
The effectiveness of it. I can connect with anyone.
I don’t feel like I’m in a fishbowl there.
Clearly, I can do more video there and not worry about family/friends seeing it. It’s more my peers there, and I’ve met so many wonderful people there. Most of the freelancers I met there years ago.
Question #9:
With marketers shifting to digital marketing more furiously, at what point do you think social media marketing will outplay the traditional marketing methods?
I think it already has. I see people doing less and less of their old print and radio/tv spots that they used to do.
Some TV integrates well with social for the bigger companies. But the smaller ones are all online now for the most part.
Question #10:
Since you are already in the list of social media expert and an influencer, what do you think about social media automation tools? Have you used any tools to manage social media marketing? What do you think about Social Champ, an automation tool that allows you to schedule posts on Facebook and other social platforms?
Yes, I loved the Buffer for years and still use it at times. I love the RSS feeds on that one. But recently in the past year, I’ve been using Agorapulse and really LOVE it.
I use their reporting for my clients all the time, and it makes it impressive. I do a lot of scheduling now with Agorapulse. It works very well with Instagram as I was having issues with it on Buffer and some images were not coming out well on Twitter via the Buffer.
Now I am looking at a new one, Social Champ that offers many great features and a way to post evergreen content for you over and over but differently each time. I want to try the free plan I see Neal Schaffer, and Peg use it!
We love that line of yours “You always have to keep your pipeline flowing!” So, what’s Lisa Sicard’s advice for bloggers who are just starting out?
Stick with it, don’t quit the first year. Keep on writing, commenting and sharing. Find mentors to emulate and work with.
I have several mentors like Ryan Biddulph, Donna Merrill, Sam Hurley, Erik Emanuelli, Neil Patel, to name a few….There are many more!
Thank you for your time, Lisa.
It was an honor to have a social media expert, like you, on board with Social Champ. 🙂
We hope our readers got to learn something new from this interview!
As for the readers, do let us know what your takes on being a social media expert are, and what are your tips and hacks?!
