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

Gabi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share a customer success story with us?

In my personal life, I’m an avid hiker and backpacker. Years ago, a friend of mine gave me an extra fleece hoodie from a company that they liked because it had a pinhole in it, and the company, LightHeart Gear, decided to send them a brand new one. Thus, she gave me the one with the pinhole. I absolutely loved the product and ended up making a YouTube video on my personal channel promoting that product. LightHeart Gear saw the video when it received 1.5k views rather quickly, and they asked if they could re-share it. They told me that the video increased their sales significantly. During this conversation, I decided to put myself out there and offer my social media marketing services to them. I had no idea it would go anywhere, but I ended up getting on a call with the owner and learning about her struggles with social media. They struggled to be consistent and the social media manager before wasn’t posting very engaging content, nor content that truly promoted the products in an authentic way that would connect with the audiences pain points and desires. I ended up sending them a proposal with some packages after learning about their social media goals and budget, and we began working together. Some content was provided and some created, but we quickly refined their social media into strategy backed content with broad content pillars and specific content ideas under the broad pillars. This ensured that every piece of content was thoughtful, and would give a good mix of education, promotion, inspiration, or humor on their page. We also refined LHG’s messaging, so that we knew we were speaking to the correct audience and their buyer types. Between these few changes and some consistent engagement on the page, along with more humorous industry related content, LightHeart Gear saw a growth spurt of 700+ more followers, reach of over 150k, and a huge increase in engagement over the 8 months we have worked together. Obviously followers don’t always lead to sales if you’re not leveraging your audience correctly with your content, but many of our posts led to sales because we knew our strategy worked. We were able to determine this stat from website clicks and conversions directly from social media efforts. In the end, LightHeart Gear was able to take a huge burden off of their daily business tasks by allowing me to create content for them and fully manage their social medias and community. The growth has been consistent and sustainable, and they have repeatedly told me that they enjoy working with someone that truly understands their industry inside and out.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Gabi, and I’m a freelance social media marketer and UGC creator based in Connecticut. I got into this industry after college, where I received a bachelors in marketing. In a really difficult job market, I decided to start working for myself. I found that my time was better spent trying to find business owners that needed social media help, rather than aimlessly applying to hundreds of jobs, where you aren’t even given rejections as a courtesy most of the time. I offer multiple services: Full social media management, strategy/audits, email marketing, paid ads, consults, and one time or recurring content shoots for business owners that want to manage everything themselves- but need quality, edited content of their product/service or to grow their personal brand. I also do UGC, aka user generated content, which is content that I create for businesses to run as paid ads or organically on their own social media.

The biggest problem I solve for clients is the guess work. Creating creative, strategy-backed content is a skill, and very necessary for social media growth. In today’s digital age, social media is extremely important for businesses to grow, and it should be their largest form of marketing, next to email marketing. What sets me apart from other social media marketers is that I am constantly educating myself and refining my skills so that I can provide the best services possible to my clients. I also do extensive research into any industry I’m going to be working with to ensure that I am creating the best strategy possible going forward with their social media. I’m also business support for many of my clients, and our working relationship is typically casual, but productive in nature. This helps to keep stress off of the business owners plate, to know that someone truly cares about their social media and business growth. I am most proud of my ability to grow solid relationships with clients, and help them grow a relationship with their community through effective social media marketing.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Cold outreach, and marketing yourself on social media. People love to say that cold outreach is dead, but the key to cold outreach is personalizing every message and being genuinely interested in the business. A lot of times business owners don’t even realize what they need, or they that they should outsource certain tasks (like social media) to work more effectively. That’s where I come in. I typically offer free audits to give some insight into what they’re doing well and what they could improve on their social media, which leads into a call about how I can help them further.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

First, you need to know what you want to be known for. If you’re trying to create a personal brand, you need to determine what you’re going to be posting about, Use this to determine your messaging. Learn what competitors are doing, and what works for them. Be able to adapt to social media, trends, and study how to create engaging content. Always analyze your content and what is performing well or not well, and make tweaks based on this. Stay consistent. Create unique content by having a signature style/series.

The same goes for businesses. Before starting, businesses need to understand their own brand identity, understand their offer and what makes them unique, and dive into a target audience analysis- their demographics, psychographics, buyer types, pain points, and desires. The next key is creating content that will speak to the target audience and solve these problems for them with correct messaging. Once you’ve done that, a huge factor for growth is consistency in posting and truly engaging with your community.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mtnmarketingcoportfolio.my.canva.site/smm-portfolio
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mtnmarketingco/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellecerra?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@gabicerrahikes?si=0AwTM000XvB0GK_q

Image Credits

all credits go to Gabrielle Cerra