Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Antonia Semanskee. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Antonia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

I do my own social media and I believe businesses that want to build credibility online should do theirs as well, but they don’t have to follow my really long and painful learning curve. As a consultant, social media was not my zone of genius. I spent the better part of two years making mistakes, learning copywriting and graphic design skills, and learning about how to use all the data. There are now people like me who have learned all the ways to make it relatively simple.

That said, if social media is not your zone of genius and you don’t want to DIY, there’s a few things to think about when hiring a social media manager: 

• Does this agency have an engaged online community of peers who validate their knowledge & skills? 
• Do they have content that’s valuable and relevant to their audience (you)?
• Is their messaging and branding clear, recognizable, and memorable? 

I learned the hard way how to do my own social media effectively and have (finally) amassed over 26K engaged organic followers on Instagram, 3.5K on Threads, and over 3.6K on LinkedIn – but it took much longer than it could have because I didn’t have a mentor or coach to guide me and save me from making a lot of stupid mistakes that slowed my growth.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a college professor who created a consulting business (called “Consulting by Toni), and I did pretty well getting clients from in-person networking…until Covid hit. Then, I needed to attract clients online. I realized that no one knew who I was online. I was invisible.

I decided to dive in and find out why some businesses were making money, and how they did that. I had about 100 followers and zero engagement on Instagram and LinkedIn. I was curious to understand why only 10% of accounts get to 10K followers ( I was not one of them), and why only 35% of business accounts get an ROI. These questions took me on a journey that completely turned my views around social media upside down.

I learned that I was posting the wrong kinds of content: photos, inspirational and motivational quotes, and events. The kind of content I was posting only worked for influencers (famous people). I was not an influencer…no one cared about my photos.

So I started sharing content that solved small problems. Content that answered questions – in the form of infographics and carousels.

On my journey I learned how to use keywords effectively, design content that people would recognize, and build relationships on social media with peers who could validate my knowledge and would support my business with referrals. I learned how to use data metrics to calculate and measure my results.

I got really good at engagement, and started taking on clients who needed that service.

After being hired by others to do their engagement, I realized that engagement was only effective if the content was valuable and if the data was being used to measure the results of all of it.

As I grew my experience and knowledge, other service-based businesses came to me and wanted to build their online reputations, so Crush Your Social was born.

Today, I have a few ways businesses can work with me. I have done-with-you services that help experts get their social media optimized for conversions (Crush Your Visibility), help them get on podcasts as guests (Crush Your Podcast Strategy), and book speaking gigs (Crush Your Keynote Strategy). All of these strategies help them build on and offline recognition and credibility. I do Keynote presentations and will be starting a group training program to help others DIY their social media for online conversions with simple processes.

I think the thing I’m most proud of is that I made this career change in my 50’s when other people my age are avoiding software, apps, and technology. I can proudly say that I have yet to meet anyone in Washington State who knows how to use social media to build trust and credibility better than me.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I learned the wrong way to build a social media profile, because I used the strategies that influencers and industry gurus were using-those don’t work for new creators.

What I learned is that the strategies are very different at different stages of account growth. The strategies that worked for large accounts did not and would not ever work for me until I had built a reputation in my industry online. I had to unlearn everything I knew about social media.

So as I said above, I went from posting content like “inspirational quotes” and photos of me to content that demonstrated my expertise, experience, and knowledge – Proof that I knew how to do the job.

Once I completely turned my approach around from “look at me” to “it’s all about you,” everything changed. Now that my accounts have grown into vibrant communities, the “look at me” content has a very specific place to live – in the stories section of my Instagram account. People who are following me and want to know more about me as a person will go there. They are the only ones who want to know about my life outside the business. And that works just fine for me. I still don’t post anything personal in my feed content, but about 1/3 of my stories have something “about me.”

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

This is the story of why I don’t teach. I was a whistleblower at one of the colleges for which I had been employed for 18 years, and I was gaslit by the administration. I tolerated an extremely toxic workplace environment for about two years and then when covid hit, it was my chance to get out. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to plan this business pivot, write a business plan, create a business model, and put together funds to start with so it made it very very hard to bootstrap everything. I wouldn’t suggest it. But I’m learning all the ins and outs of running a business and getting better at it every day. I realized that I didn’t want to ever be locked into an organization that was able to dictate if I could work, when I could take a vacation, and how much money I could make. I’m in control of reaching my financial goals now and the only person who can keep me from succeeding is me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.crushyoursocial.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/crushyoursocial
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/crushyoursocial
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/antoniasemanskeems

Image Credits
Rachel Rausch Photography Parris Blue Photography