For your weekend, I offer these words from poet Mary Oliver:

Instructions for living a life:

• Pay attention.
• Be astonished.
• Tell about it.

I can think of no wiser words for social media, for being...

Last post I talked about the dopamine loop of social media. Our brains literally send out little happy-feeling chemicals – called dopamine – when we get positive feedback on...

I’m a child of the 80’s. The measure of success for a parent in the ‘80s was keeping your kid off dope. 

As a kid I had no idea what dope really was or what it would look...

Can I give you a little tough love today?

Getting more followers will not make you happier.

Read that again slowly. Let it sink in:

Getting more followers will not make you happier.

Getting more...

…and what to do with them.

RED
If you’re seeing red because you’ve just been criticized online, take a deep breath. Don’t respond in the moment when emotions are high. Put...

How to get people from Instagram to your website:

Instagram is not inherently a traffic-driving platform like Facebook or Pinterest, so you need to be much more strategic to get people from...

Yesterday I was completely stuck on what to write for this post. I kept scrolling through my list of ideas. I had exhausted most of them and hated the rest.

In desperation, I opened up a new...

How do I promote on social without sounding sales-y?

A few tips:

• Use full sentences an actual human would say.
• Take the stance of an invitation rather than a fear tactic.
• Don’t type words...

• Post something that inspires them.
• Post something that makes them laugh.
• Post something that helps them out in their everyday life.
• Post something that a smart person said.
• Post something smart...

How do I get my posts to always appear for my followers?

This was a question one of the the hope*writers asked me. 

The quick answer:

You can’t.

A (hopefully) more helpful...

Posts: Image + caption 
Stories: Images with words or gifs on them, or videos that last 15 seconds each

Posts: Forever (unless deleted)
Stories: Temporary (shown for 24 hours)

Posts: Buttoned-up...

Feeling like you’re bearing your heart and soul in each and every post but not getting any response in return is the absolute WORST part about starting out on social media!

Unfortunately I...