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How to Manifest Anything You Want (Dream Job)

Should you quit your day job to pursue your dream job? You read all these articles about how to manifest money, your dream job or dream life, but it seems a lot more complex than just thinking it into existence, right? That’s because it is (well, kind of).

There is action involved, too (moving in the direction of that dream, taking massive action, creating space for it, raising your vibration to match what you’re asking for, etc.)

Prefer to listen? 👇

But, if you want to hear how you can manifest your dream job successfully, from someone else who’s done it twice, read on.

You aren’t alone in what you want. And you aren’t crazy. Manifesting what you want is real.

Can I Actually Manifest My Dream Job?

This is a question more and more people are asking themselves. And a lot of people are doing it successfully. We are in an age where a person can monetize their interests, passions, skills–their dream job!

I’m going to preface this whole blog article with this: I believe in serendipity, The Law of Attraction, manifesting, quantum energy, God, Universal Intelligence. Whatever it is you prefer to call it, it’s very real and an important ingredient of a happy, successful life. I also believe we can create whatever we want. We are creating our reality right now, every day. There are very few limitations to what we can manifest. (So be careful what you think about, and what you ask for)

According to Wallace Wattles, our minds are made up of “thinking stuff” that forms things from the formless. In other words, if you want something and truly believe it can be yours, then Universal Law states it must come in to being. Our thoughts become our actions that become things.

How to Manifest a New Career

I’ve changed the course of my life and my career a couple of times. It’s daunting and confusing, but it’s certainly not impossible. I did this using the aforementioned “Law” and a lot of hustle. If you are already doing bits of the new career you want to transition into, it shouldn’t be as difficult. But if you have an idea and you’re starting from scratch, it may take a little longer to launch and adjust.

For me, what started off as my side hustle took center stage and became my new career. I transitioned from a full-time fashion designer to branding and marketing professional because it was what I had already been doing anyway. For several years, in tandem with design, I was doing PR, digital marketing and brand building. Sometimes shifting careers can be as easy as extracting one aspect of your current career that you’re most passionate about and just doing that one thing. Niche is good, especially in a very noisy world.

Choosing to do something else with your time is essential if you’re feeling a tug in that direction. Just know that it will take courage to start the wheels turning, and faith and patience to keep them going. The first thing to do is: just start.

Never chase happiness. Pursue a lifestyle where the byproduct of that lifestyle is happiness. 🙏 ❤️ #TuesdayThoughts
— Ava Carmichael (@AvaMarieC) May 21, 2019

What Do You Want The Most?

I think what a lot of us want is freedom. It’s what I aimed for most of my life. Up until the last decade, none of us had as much opportunity as we do right now. We are living in a very interesting and incredible time where technology, creativity, and global connectivity allows us to do things we never thought possible. We are learning spiritual practices at levels we hadn’t heard before, too.

Whatever it is you love to do when you’re not working, find a way to turn that into your business and go for it.

Whether you want to blog full time, or go freelance or be a consultant, make stuff, etc., I am going to say first and foremost: There is plenty of room for you to accomplish this. The first rule is to define what it is you want and change your mindset. Erase any limiting beliefs that separate you from anyone else out there who is making awesome shit happen. The only difference between them and you is mindset. They believe they can, and so they do. “I think, therefore, I am.”

See yourself as a superhero of whatever it is you do or plan to do. Wake up every morning or go to sleep every night with your mantra of, “I AM A MASTER AT ______.” Dr. Joe Dispenza teaches us about “becoming supernatural” in his book, Becoming Supernatural. He explains in great scientific detail how our thoughts create our reality and how we must reprogram our thoughts to change our lives.

Whatever you state, you become. This works for better or for worse. So stop saying you’re fat, ugly, broke, etc! Stop the negative self-talk TODAY. (If you want to read more on this subject, check out my previous article, What The Secret isn’t Telling You)

How I Manifested My Career

I’ll tell you a little back story about my experience.

Quitting my hamster in the wheel scenario, being financially independent and working from home (or Hawaii, or wherever I found myself at the time) was my ultimate goal two years ago. And I was on a mission to make sure I accomplished this. But many, many years before this second epiphany, I found myself in a similar place.

In my 20s, I wanted nothing more than to be a fashion designer. At a party for spiritual gurus, movers and shakers, I met an incredible woman (she was the hostess of the party). She didn’t know it, but that night she would change the way I thought forever. She taught me the valuable lesson of ‘Speak it and be it.’

She looked at me and asked, “What do you do?” And I started with an unconvincing, “Well, I want to be a fashion design..” That’s where she cut me off and asked me to state out loud, right there, “I AM a fashion designer.” She watched me mouth the words aloud and gave me a gentle head nod as she reinforced the statement, “Speak it and be it; Speak it and become it.” She was a life-changing miracle.

At the time, I was a 26-year-old who had only one semester of design school under my belt. And as for personal spiritual growth, I was a mere babe. I had only read In the Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant. My journey was just beginning and this amazing woman was light years ahead of me. But I trusted her word beyond measure because she spoke with such conviction, and had proof to back it up. She was truly a Teacher and a Guide in my life path.

Do you know what happened 2 years later? I was hired as a Fashion Designer with no college degree for a large company in Dallas. In that 2-year timeframe after I met that wonderful woman and spoke what I was to be, I designed dozens of garments and collections for some of the largest brands in the USA, and sold over a hundred dresses under my own label I had designed from my little apartment.

But before all of that came to be, I envisioned myself as a designer, worked on myself, honed my skills, put in the work, and developed some major street cred because of the commitment I made to BE a fashion designer.

I manifested my dream job!

My career didn’t end there. I went on to become one of the industry’s best female denim designers. I managed and designed for multi-million dollar lines, created hundreds of pieces, was approached by factories, Parson’s design grads, and major companies to either show them how I created my CADS or design their denim collections.

Fast forward to 2014.

Over 10 years had passed and everything for me had totally shifted. I was no longer interested in doing corporate fashion or designing clothes. I had been juggling fashion, brand building, and social media marketing for the last several years. But now I wanted (needed) something that provided more freedom, less stress. I wanted a career that was more fluid. My current profession as a fashion designer was going to have to go to make room for the new profession I found myself in, which was helping business owners build their companies through digital marketing.

I struggled with this because so much of my life was spent in fashion design. My identity was built into it and I was having to disassemble everything and tell myself and the world a whole new story (a lesson in rebranding). Shifting gears in my late 30s-early 40s was weird.

I listened to every TedTalk and YouTube guru I could find until it finally sunk in. The overarching message behind every successful author, businesswoman/man, public speaker, motivator, etc. was this: Decide. Make yourself valuable, stick to the decision, believe in yourself 100% and be willing to go fearlessly in the direction and do the work.

I had already decided: fashion design was simply not conducive to me working from a warm beach in Hawaii or south France. It required way too many accessories (fabric, samples, rulers, mannequins, etc.) So, I got rid of everything fashion-related. I literally DECIDED, and it changed my course.

Decide: Cause to come to a resolution. To ‘cut off.’ Latin decidere ‘determine,’ from de- ‘off’ + caedere ‘cut.’

Decision Creates Change

“The principle of life is that life responds by corresponding;
your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be.” -Raymond Charles Barker (Author, The Power of Decision)

After my big decision, and after I kind of went into autopilot and started purging all of the things in my life that didn’t serve or match to the end goal, my office space was now clutter-free and I no longer had the weight of dead, expensive projects hanging around my neck. With the fat trimmed, I was able to concentrate on the meat of my goal.

Nobody ever said switching tracks in your career is easy. It was scary for me, and it had plenty of ups and downs but I believed in myself enough to know I could handle it. If this is where you’re at right now, you can handle it, too. Everything is going to feel hard at first.

Everything is new and unfamiliar, until it isn’t.

Your mind is hardwired to resist change and the unknown because it wants to protect you from danger. Become aware of your thoughts obsessively. When negative self-talk comes in, remind that voice, “I’ve got this. Shove off, please.”

As soon as you get used to the change, and the more you tell your mind to fuck off, the less your mind will stop freaking out. And you will, too. So give the changes some time to adjust but KEEP MOVING FORWARD and continue with faith to starve the fears.

Feed your faith and you’ll starve your fears.

Over the course of the next few years, I repeated what I had done before. I became a practitioner of the digital space and content currency. I read every article or book I could get my hands on about digital marketing and social media, I plugged away with blogging, building WordPress websites, working with dozens of clients on various projects, creative content, and learned how to make passive income with eBooks and affiliate networks; I learned SEO, Google Adwords, Facebook advertising and got pretty darn good at social media marketing. I was now deep in the trenches of digital marketing, and earning a good living doing it!

The Power of ‘I AM’

You see, what you want and who you want to be, or the life you want to live isn’t about asking and hoping your wish will be granted, nor is it about negotiation; It’s about YOU being the ultimate CREATOR of YOUR life and story. Doesn’t that just sound and feel awesome and limitless?

Good, because that’s exactly what it is! Don’t overthink it. Creation begins with a statement of “I AM ______ (fill in the blank with whatever it is you want to be/do).

So, my ‘I am’ in 2016 was this, “I am earning $5,000 per month and earning $100K per year by the end of 2017.”

When I said this, I honestly had no idea how, I just knew I would. And I hoped it would be from my own digital marketing business. In fact, I was pretty sure it would be. It was my BIG GOAL, after all. And a Digital Marketer is who I said I was, so the rest had to follow, right? Of course, it did. Just as it had decades prior.

Define Your Big Goal

So you have THE BIG GOAL, which is to travel, be financially independent and earning $20,000 per month (or whatever your BIG GOAL is.) Once you define THE BIG GOAL, all of the little goal steps you make along the way will be in alignment with THE BIG GOAL. Or at least, they should be. If you are faced with a decision about something, ask yourself, “Is this in alignment with where I want to go”? If it isn’t, throw it out. Stay the course!

Your Actions MUST Match Your End Goal

For example, if you want to take a direct trip to Los Angeles, California, you wouldn’t take a highway up to Montreal, Canada, would you? The same is true with your end goal. Once you’ve made your mind up for what THAT is, all decisions, actions, goals should match with your end result. Once you tell your brain where you want to go, it (and the universe) will help you in getting there. When we decide to be or do something, our brain not only sets us up to go in that direction, but we find we are accomplishing every goal along the way that leads to the big goal. Call it an energetic occurrence or whatever, but it seems to be a universal law. If you find yourself all over the place, it’s most likely because your goals and thoughts are all over the place. Remember, wherever your thoughts go, energy flows. If you keep changing up the story, the road trip is gonna be a long one before you finally get to LA.

What do you want to experience?

If you find yourself changing your course often, ask yourself not what you want to do, but what it is you want to feel or experience. Many times, we may find ourselves floundering because we are lacking something deeper and more emotional. Perhaps we are looking to address an emotional need and we do this by trying to replace it with tangible stuff or projects.

Ask yourself this question when it comes to your job or current business model: Does it serve my end goal?

The 6 key steps to manifesting what you want:

1. Deciding what you want – Decision is a powerful action. Do it without hesitation. Get clear on what it is you want.

2. Using thought and imagination to see it – visualize and see yourself in the end with whatever it is you desire.

3. Speaking it into creation – Don’t allow for negotiation on who or what you want to do, or be. Speak it. It is yours.

4. Committing to that goal 100% – This means staying focused; commit yourself to become valuable in whatever it is you want to do or be. Hone your skills, learn everything you need to learn. Honing your skills is your “side hustle.”

5. Knowing it is yours and staying the course – It may be scary or tiresome sometimes, but you have to keep pushing forward, knowing it’s coming, knowing it’s working itself out. HAVE FAITH.

6. Maintaining a positive energy field through kindness, happiness, joy, giving freely, gratitude! Be careful of what you put into your body. Healthy, high vibe foods are best. Maintain a positive circle of friends and be careful not to watch too much TV (violence, drama, or whatever feels negative or bothers your psyche)

Get out there and be fearless, write the story of your life. ❤️

P.S. If for a moment you think you can’t do what I did, drop me an email. I will get you back on track! 😉

How to Save Money and Travel More

I never really knew how vital it was to save money. I was never taught. My grandfather was extremely thrifty, but despite his habits, he never actually showed me how to save. My father was pretty stingy up until about 4 years ago, though, he was good about living below his means and taught me how to live this way. My mom never taught me the value of saving. In fact, she would not appreciate me saying this but the only thing she really taught me about money was LACK. Money was hard to get, spend it while you got it, etc. And so as a result, I went through most of my young adult life understanding frugality but never actually having a pot to piss in because I wasn’t managing, saving money or investing wisely. Why should I? Money was so out of reach it would probably never be mine, anyway.

That was a horrible narrative to have, and because of it, I had such a sense of powerlessness for way too long.

Fortunately, I left that negative self-talk in the dust years ago.

Save More, Travel More

This blog post is about getting your finances in order so you can do what you love most: Travel. It’s about taking the simple steps of becoming more aware of what’s coming in and going out in the way of spending on a daily basis. Little changes you can make will make a huge difference at the end of the year and you’ll find you actually do have enough money saved to take that trip you wanted.

Once you know what you’re daily cost of living (expenses) are, you know how much you have to make (income) every day to maintain your life, get ahead, pay off bills or just keep track of spending. It’s important to know how saving just a little bit of money every day will help you reach a much bigger goal by the end of the year. Whether you’re dreaming of a nest egg so you can quit your job and travel for a year, or if you just want a 2-week vacation in Bali or in the Maldives.

Step 1: Change your perspective about money.
Money = Freedom. Money is GOOD. We LOVE money because it enables us to do whatever we desire. Help others, travel, buy the new dress, live comfortably. Many of us have been taught that money is the root of all evil. It’s actually not. Money is a tool, that is all. What we choose to do with any tool is up to us.

Step 2: Credit is everything but don’t make it everything. I spent a lot of my young adult life spinning my hamster wheel, never really getting ‘it’ or getting ahead. I didn’t understand the value of good credit, so as a result, I neglected that aspect of my finances. You know what happened? Nothing. I couldn’t get credit, I couldn’t get financed, I had no credit card for emergencies, my hands were tied financially because of my lack of knowledge and irresponsibility in that area. It wasn’t until I addressed this issue that I begin to open up more opportunities for myself. Number 1 (if you haven’t already done so), get your credit in order. But don’t buy things you can’t afford to pay cash for. Don’t rely on your credit cards. They are there to maintain your credit for an opportunity, they are no good for things you can’t afford or to run up debt and put you in a worse position than you were before. The goal is to have them if you absolutely NEED them, not have them to USE them all the time or to buy that new Prada purse. I know, it’s tempting, but if you don’t have the cash for it, you can’t afford it.

Step 3: Track your spending, prepare a budget You can’t know anything about how you’re spending or what you’re spending until you track your spending and see where it’s going. I have known a few women who would say, “Well, I don’t know where all my money goes”. Really? If you aren’t aware of where your money is going, you’re going to be in trouble and it’s going to be a financial struggle forever until you finally say enough is enough and jump in the driver’s seat of your life. I use Quickbooks as well as my bank to look at my monthly and yearly spending. It’s easy to use and it tracks where I’m spending and helps me see a visual snapshot of the areas where I can improve.

I learned a super valuable lesson a few years ago, and that was to live below my means and save more money than I spent.

Step 4: Make more than you spend. This one is a no-brainer for me. If I know that my monthly expenses (food, mortgage, bills, gas, etc.) are $2,000, then my daily spend cannot exceed $66 per day. If I spend more than I make, guess what happens? I will end up having to rely on a credit card (See Step #2) or worse, your bank account will become overdrawn which results in, you guessed it, more fees you can’t afford to pay. Avoid the downward spiral. Be mindful and personally responsible for your daily or weekly spend threshold. If you can make sure to spend like you make half of what you do, you’ll always have extra cash in the bank. In other words, make $50K per year but live like you only make $25K per year.

Did you know that if you cut your daily Starbucks Caramel Frappuccino habit out ($4.45 for the Grande), you will save appx. $1,600 extra per year? That’s a plane ticket to Hawaii! Everything has a tradeoff. You have to decide what is more important to you: The plane ticket to Hawaii or that daily Frappucino from Starbucks.

Step 5: Invest Wisely As an entrepreneur and creative, I was putting time and money in a lot of different places and seeing very little return on my investments. I was still in a very old mindset, trying to create wealth from tangible goods. There is value in intangible goods as well, so be sure to pay attention to the skills you have. Investing in yourself is always a wise choice. Make sure you are putting your time and money in places where there is going to be a solid return. This goes for services and resources for your business. If you have too many apps or services that aren’t providing much help or a good ROI, cancel them.

Do you know the average American family is spending appx. $75 per month to watch TV? Hulu and Netflix streaming are collectively less than $22 per month and you don’t have to PAY to watch ads from Big Pharma. Think about what you could be saving per year just by cutting out your cable bill: $900 per year.

Step 6: “Do I really need this? Or would I rather have the $100 instead”? If the answer was the latter, the dress I was eyeballing went right back on the rack! This tough love is what you’ll need for yourself, too. I had to visualize the object and then see the cash to realize what I really wanted was the money most, instead of the way that object might make me feel for a moment. (P.S. I have also been pretty fortunate to have about $120 a month in a free-spending budget for clothes, shoes, and cosmetics. I seriously haven’t bought cosmetics or shoes in over a year because of an affiliate network I’m plugged into) Find one you like (like ThredUP or Zulily) that offers credit for referrals and you will save yourself at least $1,200 a year in clothing, shoes, and accessories.)

Step 7: Become ‘Fed Up’ Stop just focusing on what you want and look at the things in your life that you don’t want. Become fed up with being broke and not having your finances in order to travel when you want, or do whatever you want. I was tired of spinning my wheels and it was time for me to stick to my guns and call the necessary shots to get me to my free, independent, “laptop lifestyle” beach getaway. No one, I mean no one was going to get me there but me.

At any given moment, the average household has appx. $5,000 worth of stuff laying around that could be liquidated for cash.

Step 8: Downsize, Get Rid of the Clutter. Believe it or not, the more shit you own, the more expensive your living expenses are. Why? Because of this: More than one vehicle means having to pay double for insurance, gas, maintenance, payments, etc. You will also have a place to park them, which means either a. You’ll spend more money on a parking place in the city or b. your home will require a 2 car garage or a 4 car garage. Also, have you tried to move a 3 bedroom household full of stuff and furniture? The average costs to move that much crap is around $5,000 unless you DIY. More stuff means a bigger house which means a more expensive house. Are you seeing the picture? If you have so much stuff that you have to rent a storage building (est. $780 per year) to keep it, then you have too much stuff. Have a garage sale and get rid of all that stuff. Hubs and I did it a few years ago and we walked away with a cleaner garage and over $700 extra in our pocket! That’s a week stay in Hawaii or two weeks in Bali!

Step 9: What’s the bottom line on your grocery bills? When I went through my budget last year to track my spending, I realized I was spending thousands per year on groceries! Wow. I was a little shocked. $50 here, $35 there. After a few times per month here and there, it really adds up! I thought: I have got to do something different. I also realized just how much waste was happening in my refrigerator. I was buying more than my husband and I could eat, so half of the groceries I was spending my hard earned dollars on was going in the trash. Yikes! Are you guilty of this? If so, make sure you aren’t buying more than you can use or eat. We go to Costco now for about 80% of our groceries. We also have a freezer in our basement we use, too. We invested a little in freezer containers and now we freeze what we know we won’t be able to use right away. Buying in bulk on the forefront can feel costly, but it’s much cheaper in the end and you’ll find you’re going to the store less and you won’t be as tempted with the impulse buys that seem to add up! Also, for fruits and veggies, try a garden if you have space or hit up your local farmers market. I grow my own herbs because I always need them and they can be expensive in the store. Even if you grow your own peppers or tomatoes you’ll find it cuts down a bit on your groceries, especially since organic tomatoes can cost around $4 per lb.

Step 10: Automatically put 10% of your paycheck into an account you don’t see or touch! Out of sight, out of mind. Again, if you are living like you’re making $25K and making $5oK, this will be easier for you. Make sure 10% of every paycheck you get goes into a bank account called “Nest Egg” or whatever you want to call it. Don’t touch it, smell it, look at it. Pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s a time capsule waiting for your day of freedom. Just like when Andy Dufresne led Red to the buried treasure underneath the tree so he could meet him in South America, this is your Shawshank treasure pot. Guard it.

Andy Dufresne: You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?
Red: No.
Andy Dufresne: They say it has no memory. That’s where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.

In total, the amount of savings I mention above (not counting the 10% you’ll sock away) could potentially save you about $5,000 per year. That’s definitely enough travel money, especially if you know how to travel on a budget.

Read: 10 Kick Ass Ways to Make Money While You Travel

What’s the Cost of Social Media Marketing?

How much does social media marketing cost?

This seems to be a burning question everyone is asking.

Well, the short of the long of it is this: A minimum of $2,500-$5,000 on average per month, depending on where your target audience is and what you want to achieve. Don’t be alarmed, I will tell you why the costs are as such

(P.S. If you are a Digital Marketer, please feel free to share this with potential employers who aren’t ‘getting’ the cost of your rates.)

Sometimes, you have to pay extra for PR or blog content writing. A lot of those $2,500K-$5K prices may or may not be all-inclusive deals. And it’s not unusual to find many agencies who charge $10,000 per month for social media marketing & management.

According to some data findings, the cost to create and establish just a new Twitter account with targeted Followers and a little bit of content is anywhere from $2K-$7,500.

So I guess the average $2,500-$5,000 isn’t so bad when you consider the fact that some agencies charge $5,000 – just to manage your Facebook account. Nothing else —just Facebook. Add on Instagram and/or Pinterest and you can double that fee.

$5,000 per month for a Social Media Marketer seems “high” because we spend so much time online, doing just that: interacting socially and participating in social media. Our perception of social media is “fun time”, it hasn’t registered to us that this is THE advertising platform for all businesses, it is something to take seriously and no, not everyone or an intern can just do it. Not effectively, of course.

A great social media and digital marketer is worth his/her weight in GOLD.

Wherever the audience is, advertising follows. Once it was Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, TV. Now, it’s online through our news and blogger channels and our Social Media feeds.

If we can look at it from a media platform we are used to, such as Magazines, we can truly see the value and the difference: We have magazine readers, and we have magazine creators.

We don’t see all of the behind-the-scenes magic that happens to make that content available and in our face. That is what advertising is, and what Social Media Marketing is all about.

Ok. But “Why so much?” you ask

Let’s break it down:

Graphics and Social Media Ad Creatives The cost of social media graphics and ad creatives – this includes a professional graphic designer with marketing knowledge to create visual ads that deliver results. There is a psychology behind an ad creative that works. This isn’t the job for just any Joe Schmo Photoshop Pro when it comes to creating a fine-tuned ad creative. The average salary of a Graphic Designer is anywhere from $45-$60K per year, with some earning as much as $75K.
Video Creative. A business online without video is missing a huge opportunity. If you aren’t on YouYube or have great video collections on Facebook, you might as well be invisible. Video consumption is the #1 way to reach your audience, and creators who plan, write, shoot and edit your videos are not cheap. Sorry to say this but a quality video is important. Sure, you can shoot something with an iPhone, but make sure the content is valuable and sound is 100%. A simple video can cost around $500 per video to start. If you’re super creative or resourceful, you can find options in the $100 range.
Market research This is a very important aspect of advertising. You have to zero in on your target audience. It makes no sense to shoot your product out into the universe if it’s not aimed at the right audience. Market research answers: Who is your audience, what do they want, what are they buying, what do they respond to, where do they hang out and who are your competitors?
Ad rates The costs of promoting you or your business. Ad rates are generally included in a market budget, and an average and conservative cost can be anywhere from $250-$500 a month for Twitter and Facebook Ads alone.
PR Writing and crafting the perfect pitches, reaching out to Bloggers, Editors, Magazines, Influencers, and even celebrities. This aspect is HARD WORK. A lot of PR agents I know charge $5K per month, just for PR. Nothing else.
Creating Marketing Campaigns, Calendars + Strategies. Sometimes creating a marketing campaign can take days (or even weeks) to not only research and plan but to write it out. (One simple 3-month marketing campaign I created a few weeks ago took me over 16 hours to research, create and write.) This takes a lot of time, but executed well, it pays off.
Writing Press Releases – GOOD Copywriters can charge anywhere from $350-$1500 per article.
Writing Blog Posts – Rich content blog posts are worth their weight in gold to the tune of saving you about $250,000 in Google Adwords costs. A well-written blog post with organic traffic can harness as much, if not more traffic, as an expensive Google Adwords campaign. One single blog post I wrote in 2011 has generated 256,000 hits for my blog so far. If I would have paid the average $1 CPC (Cost-per-Click) with Google Adwords, it would have cost me $256,000! ?
Blog writers know their stuff when it comes to SEO, and they craft their posts to maximize search results. According to ClicktoTweet and HubSpot, “Articles with a word count between 2,250 and 2,500 earn the most organic traffic”. A good blog writer will charge around .45 cents per word on average, so a 1,000-word post is $450. For example, this post you’re reading right now is 1,326 words (or about $600).
Social Media Manager A full time (daily) social media manager to monitor your accounts, create engaging posts, interact, respond to positive (and negative) feedback across all channels. I’m talking about a dedicated person who not only knows the ins and outs of social media, but one who works on all your social media accounts all day (Instagram, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook), and knows how to track and analyze the data. This is a full-time job and if you were to pay him or her a salary, it would probably cost you a minimum of $45K/yr. ($3,750/mo) with most being in the $55K to $65K per year bracket.

Don’t be bummed.

If you already have an established Twitter or Facebook account, it could be a little more cost effective, because you won’t have to start from scratch and what you’ll need is a social media manager to maintain and manage your accounts: (i.e. keep them flowing, interact, grow your followers, establish relationships, and build brand awareness). So, If you were to hire someone full time to manage your one account, not create contests, promotions or ads, it would most likely cost a minimum of $40K per year, which is a salary of $3,300/mo.

$750,000 = This is how much Snapchat costs were per ‘Brand Story’ ad, which is a branded post that appears within the app’s ‘Stories’ feed.

(update: 12/2015 The minimum budget for advertising on Snapchat recently dropped from $700,000+ to $100,000)

Advertising has always been costly but it’s vital to business growth.
And sometimes, businesses just aren’t ready yet.

People scratch their heads in confusion when things aren’t selling, or when customers aren’t responding. I’ve been there before. I’d think, “I’m doing everything right!” when the truth is, I was just not giving enough to my marketing budget or plan.

We all want to see fantastic results, but what we don’t see is the costs associated with the results we want. And it can be overwhelming at first, but once the momentum starts, it all starts working pretty harmoniously. Better budget for advertising = more sales = more advertising budget = even more sales, etc.

“It’s nearly impossible to do PR and Social Media Marketing on your own, unless you have tons of time, are super-savvy (creatively), and have a team to help out. Make sure you budget anywhere from 15-20% of your annual income for marketing, because a funny thing happens when you don’t do it: Nothing. Meanwhile, you see competitors with the same products as you doing it and going global. If you want to succeed, there is no other choice. It needs to be a financial priority in your business plan and must be factored in as a cost to doing business”.

In the quick moving digital world we now live in, we simply can’t wait for our audience and business to come to us. Digital and social media is where all of the attention is these days. We stream Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Amazon. We are plugged into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

This is where the audience of the world is today, and if you aren’t finding a way to reach them through these channels, you’re kind of on another planet. If you take your business seriously, find a way to either amp up your social media marketing time per day or hire a professional to help you grow your business. You honestly can’t afford not to.